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According to the results of a poll
conducted last week of more than 1,700
Harvard undergraduates, nearly 62
percent of respondents support the official
recognition of the Reserve Officer
Training Corps as a fully supported student
organization by the University—a
move that would reverse a 40 year-old
Harvard policy.
The poll—sponsored by the Harvard
Republican Club—reflects the opinions
of roughly a quarter of Harvard’s undergraduate
population, and cuts across
all bands of the political spectrum:
54 percent of
respondent self-reported
as Democrats,
while 19 percent
identified
as Republicans
and 27 percent
as independents.
Official recognition
for
ROTC could
help facilitate
transfer of
course credit for ROTC classes taken at
MIT, allow financial support from Harvard
for cross-registration, and mean
the removal of language in the student
handbook that says military and ROTC
policies excluding openly gay people are
“inconsistent with Harvard’s values.”
Although Colin J. Motley ’10, president
of the HRC, said that the poll was
certainly vulnerable to some “self-selection
bias,” he said it remained a valid
barometer for the campus’ sentiments.
“It shows that faculty opinion is really
out of touch with student opinion,
but more importantly it shows student
support for the cadets and midshipmen,”
Motley said.
Shawna L. Sinnott ’10, a Marine
ROTC midshipman, said she believed
the results showed that the current
generation is better able to distinguish
individual ROTC members from the
political issue of “Don’t Ask, Don’t
Tell”—the controversial policy that
bars openly gay individuals from serving
in the armed forces.
“Just the fact that it was being discussed
was a big step, more so that they
were engaging intellectually,” Sinnott
said. “I think a lot of us have felt that
we’ve had a lot of individual support
from students throughout our time
here at Harvard, but it always seems like
the public eye is against us.”
The HRC poll follows a week-long
campaign in April to gain recognition
for ROTC on campus, with Motley noting
that a similar poll on Columbia’s
campus led to full-scale dialogue between
students and faculty members
on the policy.
But critics of the poll said that none
of the advocates of ROTC’s recognition
have made
public gestures to
fully address the
issue of non-discrimination
and
officially condemn
the DADT policy,
saying that without
openly condemning
DADT, only
one side of the issue
is actually being
examined.
“I think they’re
conflating their political
objective with the opinion of the
student body,” said Queer Students and
Allies Co-Chair Marco Chan ’11, who
nonetheless praised the actual exercise
of the poll as a valuable means of promoting
discussion.
Motley said that the policy’s exclusion
from the GOP platform has prohibited
the HRC from taking an official
position on DADT, while Sinnott
said that ROTC cadets find themselves
bound by military free speech policies
that require them to be “apolitical.”
The University’s current position on
ROTC was first established in 1969 in
response to the storming of University
Hall by students protesting the Vietnam
War.
The University now does not recognize
ROTC because of the military’s
DADT policy, which the University says
is in conflict with its anti-discrimination
policy.
—Staff writer Edward-Michael Dussom
can be reached at emdussom@fas.harvard.edu
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