Wisconsin U. Faculty Votes to Expel ROTC Program

No one “ho-ho’d” for Ho Chi Minh, flashed a peace sign or toked on a joint, but the faint echo of Vietnam rattled through the University of Wisconsin on Monday as an extraordinary campuswide faculty congress urged an end to military training programs at the 43,000-student institution.

In the first such faculty session since the height of the war, professors bypassed their own faculty Senate and voted 386 to 248 to petition the university’s Board of Regents to shut down the Reserve Officer Training Corps program--always a lightning rod for Vietnam-era campus protest--because it refuses to admit homosexuals.

More than one-quarter of the school’s 2,400 faculty members crowded onto the sawdust covered floor of the university livestock pavilion, outfitted with chairs and microphones for the occasion, to participate in the debate.

If the regents follow the recommendation, which is by no means certain, it would mark the first time since the war’s end that an ROTC unit had been expelled from a major university campus.

Backers of the initiative insisted that, unlike the old days, they weren’t out to embarrass the military, just to pressure it into ending a longstanding ban on gay and lesbian participation in ROTC and all other programs.

“We don’t believe that they’re going to change simply because of what happens at Wisconsin, but we want to hasten the day that the military does change,” explained sociology professor Michael Olneck, a member of Faculty Against Discrimination in University Programs which spearheaded the ROTC vote. “We’re not hoping to rid the campus of ROTC, but that could be the consequence.”

Still, the action revived memories of a time, not too long ago, when the sprawling Wisconsin campus was a hotbed of raucous, sometimes violent anti-war, and anti-military dissent.

During the war, radicals firebombed the campus ROTC headquarters and blew up a Pentagon financed mathematics research center on campus, killing a physics researcher inside. By 1973, anti-war activists had succeeded in electing one of their own as mayor of Madison, the state capital as well as the university’s home base. The new mayor, Paul Soglin, promptly outraged traditionalists with brash stunts, such as the time he went to Cuba and handed the keys to the city to Communist dictator Fidel Castro.

Students were active this year in urging the university to revoke the ROTC affiliation, but in a much more low key way than their Vietnam era predecessors. A poll indicated their strong support for such a move, and the Student Senate earlier passed a recommendation similar to the faculty vote. Supporters said the latest protest drive was in keeping with Wisconsin’s traditions.

“The University of Wisconsin has been the first to get the ball rolling on many issues of social change throughout the country,” argued David Wilcox, a sophomore music major and co-president of the Ten Per Cent Society, an organization of gay and lesbian students.

The issue has surfaced at other campuses as well, as student and faculty councils from as widely varied institutions as Harvard and San Jose State have urged the military to rethink the policy.

The Defense Department policy, which a spokesman said is not under review, is that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service” because it “adversely affects the ability of the armed forces to maintain discipline, good order and morale” and “maintain public acceptability.”

Under the faculty proposal, the University would notify the Pentagon that it will end its affiliation with ROTC by 1993 unless the military opened its ranks to homosexuals. The 1993 date was chosen to allow current freshmen in ROTC to graduate.

At present, 440 Madison students are enrolled in Army, Navy or Air Force ROTC programs. Most receive regular government stipends and at least one-third are on a full military scholarship. Upon graduation, they would automatically become commissioned officers in their respective service branches.

During Monday’s debate, even critics of the phase-out plan said the Pentagon needed to revamp its thinking towards gays and suggested more pressure should be put on Congress to force a policy change. However, they argued, a unilateral cessation of ROTC at Wisconsin was a futile gesture that would do little to influence opinion makers in the Pentagon while depriving students of a source of scholarship money and the university of $2 million a year in military funding.

“The proposal before us involves shooting ourselves in the foot and is akin to a mosquito bite on a whale,” said Gordon Baldwin, a law professor and faculty liaison for ROTC programs at Madison.

Though technically spectators at the session, a few students were allowed to address the gathering. David Banholzer, a junior and a cadet in the Air Force ROTC, warned that ousting the program from college campuses would only diminish civilian input into the military. “The ROTC is not the presence of the military on our campus, it is the presence of our campus in the military,” he argued.

But Jordan Marsh, the president of the school’s senior class, challenged his professors to set an example for students by backing their anti-discriminatory rhetoric with deeds. “Actions speak louder than words and we are watching your actions today,” he declared. “Please, teach us that discrimination is unacceptable.”