Faust To Attend ROTC Event

University President Drew G. Faust will attend this year’s Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) commissioning ceremony during Commencement, continuing a new precedent set by her predecessor Lawrence H. Summers.

According to Harvard spokesman John D. Longbrake, Faust will be “part of the program,” although he did not say what her precise role would be. Summers spoke at the commissioning ceremony each year as Harvard president in an effort to show support for students participating in ROTC.

Harvard has had a fractious relationship with ROTC since its removal from campus in 1969 in the wake of strident anti-war protests. ROTC remains banished due to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which Harvard considers discriminatory, and is not deemed an official Harvard organization.

Harvard students involved with ROTC conduct their exercises with a battalion at MIT.

Last year, neither Faust, who had not yet taken office, nor then-Interim President Derek C. Bok attended the ceremony. Their absence drew criticism from student groups at Harvard and from the Wall Street Journal.

A June 8, 2007 editorial in the Journal wrote that ROTC has been “mostly spurned by the school’s administration,” and that their “honor and service deserve better from their academic tutors.”

Longbrake said that Faust and Bok both had previous commitments that day and so could not attend the officer commissioning ceremony.

President of the Harvard Republican Club Caleb L. Weatherl ’10, whose group has campaigned for greater recognition of ROTC from the college, said that he commended Faust for her decision to participate in the ceremony.

“Her attendance this year, I believe, shows that it is important to her to honor the students who choose to serve in the military,” Weatherl said, adding that “we should all be grateful” to students in ROTC for their willingness to serve.

Although members of Harvard’s gay community have protested against a stronger ROTC campus presence in the past, Clayton W. Brooks III ’10 said that he interpreted Faust’s decision to attend the ceremony as keeping with the University’s anti-discrimination policy.

“We don’t feel that she is in any way supporting the policy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” said Brooks, administrative chair of the Harvard College Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Political Coalition.

But Brooks also expressed his desire for more sweeping changes in the relationship between the military and the gay community.

“We hope to one day see [Faust] speak at the ROTC commissioning service in which openly LGBT students can also participate,” he said.

—Staff writer Athena Y. Jiang can be reached at ajiang@fas.harvard.edu.