ROTC INTENT

To the Editors of The CRIMSON:

I appreciated your direct and plain statement about the intent of the overwhelming Faculty vote of April 17 in your editorial of April 21.

We need not now go through another period of indecisive "interpretation" by negotiating committees. It was the intent of my resolution, of the seconding speeches, and, I believe, of the Schelling Amendment to phase out ROTC in its present traditional form, to leave in its place at most an undergraduate extracurricular group with none of the special privileges and facilities required by a regular ROTC operation. It was not the intent of the Faculty to create a "front" for ROTC, but rather to make possible some sort of bridge between students and various service training functions to be carried on outside the University--whether in newly formed Metropolitan District ROTC units, or at regular service bases. That bridge could take the form of a club of those involved in such units.

I agree with Mr. Marbury's remarks at Adams House reported in the CRIMSON of April 21, that rent-free occupation of Shannon Hall would be inconsistent with the principle of the Bruner resolution. I would also urge that the provision of Shannon Hall by the University even for a generous rent would be inconsistent with the principle. Ordinary extracurricular activities do not have such privileges and facilities, nor the financial backing of the Department of Defense.

I, like most of my colleagues, recognize that the times have changes and that the old ROTC formula no longer suits the temper of the contemporary university. I for one do not wish to bar the participation of educated young men from this or other universities in the military services. Nor do I wish to diminish the role the military services have played historically in assuring our security and freedom. That is not the purpose of the resolution voted by the Faculty last Thursday. For my part, and here I can speak only, as one member of this Faculty. I would like to see a transition begin not only as soon as possible within legal restraints, but see it carried out as openly and candidly as possible. No purpose will be served by obscuring the intent of the Faculty vote by arcane interpretations of what are the "privileges and facilities" of ordinary extracurricular activities. The Department of Athletics and PBH are not models of what the Faculty had in mind. The first is a Department of Instruction--which ROTC is specifically not, the second is an extraordinary extracurricular activity by any standard.

Harvard can lead the nation, as it has in the past. The near unanimous vote of the Faculty on Thursday should give the President and Fellows the backing they need to end the University's conventional ties to ROTC and to find new ways of affirming Harvard's responsibility to the national defense more in keeping with our times. I cannot presume to guess what those ways will be, and I can only hope that the intent of the Faculty to limit ROTC to an ordinary extracurricular activity will be clearer by virtue of this letter. Jerome S. Bruner   Professor of Psychology