We Asked, They Told

Daniel G. Punt '99, a Navy midshipman, has listened to the Undergraduate Council debate to bring ROTC back to campus.

He thinks it's absurd.

"It wouldn't work. There aren't enough ROTC students to make it possible," Punt said. Even if ROTC returned, he said, there are so few students in the program right now--50 total--that they would continue to train at MIT.

Punt says he feels dictating change to an established organization such as the military is no business of the council.

"It's vaguely analogous to the U.C. drafting a bill to make the Opportunes into a 40 person choir," he said. "Is this in the U.C.'s purview? I really don't think so."

But others in ROTC, also speaking personally--not as representatives from their time-consuming extracurricular, see the current debate cut to the heart of their Harvard experience. It raises questions of whether they feel truly supported on campus--and forces them to consider how something they've devoted so much time to can elicit such strong feelings from their peers.

Far beyond simply bemoaning the commute across Cambridge, some cadets and midshipmen say they are being both glorified and vilified by various interests. Council members sponsoring the bill have presented the debate as a matter of respect for ROTC participants, suggesting that opponents are dishonoring those who serve their country.

Legislation opponents see the issue in terms of intolerance against gay students, claiming bill endorsers are implicitly turning a blind eye toward discrimination.

It is the cadets and midshipmen, rarely consulted on the issue, who see the gray area in the debate-- implicated in the system as much as they question it.

An Officer and a Gentleman

Luis Angel P. Gonzalez Jr. '01always knew he wanted a career in the armed forces. Like generations before him, Gonzalez plans to continue a family history of service in the military.

An Officer and a Gentleman

"My father served in Vietnam, my grandfather served under General MacArthur, and my great grandfather served in World War One," Gonzalez says.

Yet while his relatives were all enlisted, Gonzalez is the first to participate in officer training. He serves as both a drill officer and a squad leader, travelling to MIT each week for three hours of class and two hours of physical training with his squad.

Upon graduation from Harvard, Gonzalez will enter the Navy as a commissioned officer and is obligated to perform four years of service. Not a problem: the government concentrator is planning a lifelong career in the armed forces and hopes to work in aviation and eventually the intelligence field.

Despite his own impressions of ROTC, Gonzalez's classmates at Harvard have expressed a more negative view toward the program.

Returning to school in uniform, Gonzalez has encountered a number of jokes about ROTC.

"Friends that I've met on campus will ask how 'Nazi' is doing," he says.

Gonzalez bristles at that sort of comparison as inconsistent with the military's or his own service mission.

"It's saying that serving your country in the armed services is just like being a tool of an armed oppressor. I see the military's job as the exact opposite--protecting the innocent like the Kosovar Albanians," he says.

"I've always wanted to serve my country and what they're saying is equating national service, which I deem honorable, with definite evils," he adds.

Gonzalez recognizes that not everyone shares his views on ROTC and the military in general. Eager to discuss the controversy, he feels the issue requires careful consideration.

"Just by saying we don't want ROTC on our campus is not adding constructively to the argument. It's casting it aside in the shadows," he says. "This debate is a great thing that a lot can be achieved from."

While Gonzalez thinks that the armed forces will eventually confront the issue of "don't ask, don't tell," he sees student discussion as an important precursor to policy change.

"I do believe that one day homosexuals will be fully integrated into the military. What is more important for now is to create an atmosphere for debate and acknowledgement that there is a problem," he says.

Out of Service

Laura C. Moore, MIT class of 1991, was a ROTC midshipman as an undergraduate and served on active duty. Moore says she never came out about her bisexuality while she was serving but saw many cases of discrimination against other recruits.

Out of Service

"The ROTC unit at MIT had students from Harvard, MIT, Wellesley, and Tufts - a pretty enlightened and educated bunch of people," she says. "Yet when the topic came to gays in the military, the level of anger and closed-mindedness I saw was shocking."

Moore says that while she was in ROTC, there was a push by some Harvard midshipmen to bring the program back to campus. She remembers talking about the discrimination issue with one of the students behind the campaign: "He said that the military shouldn't have to accept people who had something wrong with them, whether they were gay or had a leg missing, or whatever--his words."

"There weren't any openly gay people in ROTC to discriminate against, but the atmosphere was certainly homophobic," she adds, saying that among midshipmen, the word "fag" was considered to be the ultimate insult.

She tells the story of an MIT student who was in her company in ROTC for a semester. When the student came out to his unit commander at the beginning of his senior year, the Navy demanded he pay back the first three years of his full scholarship.

The Navy relented after the student took his case to the press. But Moore says the military is missing out.

"He would have made a better officer than any officer I knew on active duty," she says. "But because he was gay, he couldn't serve and the military lost out. The Navy could have benefitted by someone of his caliber."

Considering All Sides

The fringes are clear.

Radical leftists might suggest the inherent intolerance of any organized armed force, calling for the complete abolition of the U.S. military.

The ultra-conservatives cringe at the thought of homosexuality in any part of the public sphere, never mind the front lines of battle.

Move toward the center from here and you'll find those who cite pragmatic reasons for "don't ask, don't tell," noting the military's attitude toward sexuality in any context and the particularly uniform environment the armed forces wishes to foster.

But many of the cadets and midshipmen, while part of the same system, vary ideologically. Most, though, see both room for negotiation and a need for resolution.

ROTC students are currently sent a mixed message, celebrated during Commencement in a Yard commissioning ceremony, yet barred from postering or otherwise acting like any other student group on campus.

ROTC midshipman Jacqlynn K. Duquette '00 says she understands the University's stance against the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, but finds its ramifications unfair.

"By not allowing us to poster or table for events on campus, the College is preventing us from expressing that part of our University experience," Duquette says. "This is not such a black and white issue, and there needs to be compromise."

At a recent debate, Air Force ROTC cadet Joe C. Lucas '00 said traveling to MIT for training was the least problematic part of the University's policy.

"I don't really think it's an inconvenience," he said. "That's not the what the issue is all about. It's about whether we feel welcome on campus."