National ROTC Coverage: 2016

• 3 February 2016 Harvard Crimson column "Cadet Land: Caught in the middle of No Man's Land" by Nathan L. Williams '18.  Note:  An Army ROTC student reports that his Army uniform attracts "nothing but unwanted attention".
• 4 February 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Four-Star General McDew Emphasizes Importance of ROTC".  Note:  "McDew, who is the commander of the United States Transportation Command— which controls all transportation for the Department of Defense— emphasized the importance of ROTC at Harvard and more generally, saying such programs “allow the American public to better understand its military.”“In our democratic society, it’s vitally important that we have the support of the American public,” he said."
• 17 February 2016 Harvard Crimson column "So Much for Cover: Camouflaged" by Nathan L. Williams '18.  Note:  An Army ROTC student reports "walking into class in uniform, I feel like I’m on trial. The atmosphere becomes tense; people look at me as if I’m spearheading some sort of military takeover of Harvard."
• 18 March 2016 Boston Globe article "At Harvard, Garland urged debate on ROTC".  Note:  "As a Harvard student government leader in the early 1970s, Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, played a key role in efforts to hold a referendum that would have asked students if the university should end its campus ban on the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps... More than 40 years later, it could give Senate Republicans opposing his nomination to the high court ammunition to say he did not sufficiently defend the US military in the face of left-wing activists. Under pressure from a leftist group called the New American Movement, which had gathered 2,500 signatures, Garland asked a student-faculty steering committee to formally initiate debate on a campuswide referendum in October 1973 that asked whether the university should allow ROTC to return to campus, or keep its policy that effectively banned the group... At a time of anti-Vietnam War protests and student activism, such a vote probably would have shown the student body overwhelmingly favored keeping the ban in place — placing intense pressure on the Harvard administration to continue the ban. Indeed, as the threat of a referendum loomed, the administration signaled that no move was afoot to relax the ROTC ban, according to Crimson reports at the time. As a result, the larger student committee, including Garland, voted to scuttle the referendum effort — but on a provisional basis, as long as the administration did not propose lifting the ROTC ban. “It was not the time to revisit that issue,” said David Johnson, who was at Harvard with Garland and was also a student representative who voted on the ROTC issue."
• 24 March 2016 speech at West Point "To Be “A Speaker of Words and a Doer of Deeds:” Literature and Leadership" by Harvard President Drew Faust.  Note: President Faust stressed the importance of communication skills for leaders.
• 30 March 2016 Wall Street Journal "Notable & Quotable" feature: "Caution, ROTC on Campus".  Note:  The Journal quotes from a CampusReform article about a professor who wovs to call the police whenever she sees ROTC students doing training exercises on campus.  It is not clear whether she meant with or without using guns.
• 6 April 2016 Harvard Crimson column "Thank You for Your Service: Worshipped, yet forgotten" by Nathan L. Williams '18.  Note:  An Army ROTC student writes "When someone confronts me with the phrase “thank you for your service,” my mind freezes. Do I respond to this with another “thank you”? Should I silently nod, or would that come off as rude? Or should I tell them the truth: that I’m a cadet, not a soldier. I’ve never been deployed."
• 7 April 2016 Harvard Crimson op-ed "Recognized, Not Respected " by Charley Falletta '16.  Note:  A Harvard senior in Army ROTC noted remarks by President Faust at West Point and observed that Faust "has been frustratingly slow to respond to the cadets and midshipmen on her own campus."  Falletta notes that Yale has made ROTC a priority, and its ROTC programs are growing, while Harvard's programs are shrinking.
• 15 April 2016 Chicago Maroon article "After Decades of Absence and Years Commuting, ROTC is Back on Campus".  Note:  The program has classes on campus and is supervised by Major Michael Kesl, who also an Assistant Professor of Military Science at University of Illinois, Chicago.
• 21 April 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Harvard to Officially Recognize Air Force ROTC".  Note:  "President Drew G. Faust and Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James will sign an agreement in Loeb House on Friday morning to renew the relationship between the two institutions... “ROTC students bring different and important perspectives that enhance and enrich the educational experience for the entire Harvard community, and we are delighted to have Air Force ROTC represented again at Harvard,” Anna Cowenhoven, a spokesperson for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, wrote in a statement." 
• 21 April 2016 USAToday column "Ivy League should do more to promote ROTC" by ML Cavanaugh. Note: An Army major notes that the number of students in ROTC at Harvard has declined under President Faust and suggests that Harvard and other Ivy League schools can do more to encourage and support ROTC students.
• 21 April 2016 Boston Globe op-ed "Harvard and the Air Force, together again" by Deborah Lee James.  Note:  The Secretary of the Air Force wrote "For our country to remain a beacon of freedom and progress, we must continue to seek and embrace the intellect across America, both in and out of uniform. Our Air Force and our nation need the contributions that ROTC cadets offer, and we are proud to help them make the transition from Harvard Crimson to Air Force Blue."
• 22 April 2015 Harvard Gazette article "Air Force ROTC returns to Harvard".  Note:  "[Harvard President Drew] Faust said. “So as we complete our work to return ROTC to campus with today’s signing, let us renew our support for them and our commitment to shared values: service, community, inclusion, and opportunity.”"
• 25 April 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Faust Signs Agreement to Recognize Air Force ROTC".  Note: Harvard President Drew Faust said “We honor today the courage, devotion, and skill of women and men who continue to regard military service as public service and whose numbers I hope increase in the years ahead”.  Although numbers of ROTC students fell during the years in which Faust has been president, the number of admitted students with ROTC scholarships has increased for the class of 2020.
• 26 April 2016 Harvard Crimson editorial "Thank You, ROTC: Harvard’s recognition of Air Force ROTC is a long overdue step of gratitude".  Note:  The editors wrote "The best way for us to show thanks to our classmates in uniform is to support the ROTC program and to encourage it to grow and flourish.... Ensuring that ROTC students feel included on campus is not simply a matter of practicality, but one of diversity as well. At Harvard, conversations surrounding diversity usually take place in the context of racial and socioeconomic inequality. But as important as those conversations are, we must not lose sight of the value of maintaining different kinds of diversity—diversity of experience, perspective, and even future career paths."
• 23 May 2016 Yale Daily News article "After decades-long hiatus, 14 ROTC grads commissioned".  Note:  Sec. of Defense Ashton Carter spoke at the commissioning of the first cohort of Yale students who started after the return of ROTC to Yale.  "Carter called the commission of the first class an “important homecoming for the nation... Security is like oxygen: when you have it, you don’t think of it,” Carter said. “When you don’t have it, it’s all you think about.” Yale President Peter Salovey and Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy also attended.
• 23 May 2016 Harvard Gazette article "The military-humanities connection".  Note: Harvard students in ROTC "say they have been ambassadors of a kind to their classmates, who have had a mix of reactions to their decision to become military officers, from curiosity to respect to anxiety and even astonishment.  “For many of my classmates at the College, both from the U.S. and abroad, I was one of the only, if not the only member of the military they had ever met,” said Christian Yoo ’13, now a lieutenant junior grade studying at the Naval Nuclear Power Training Command in South Carolina. “I think it’s a good thing for them to have had some exposure to and a chance to learn about the U.S. military from their undergraduate classmates, and I’m glad I could play a role in facilitating that growth in understanding.”"  ROTC training includes some highly generalizable skills: Marine Catherine Brown ’14 said “I was trained to be calm and decisive in stressful situations, and to be rational and cognizant of my teammates and environment while hot, tired, hungry, and uncomfortable.”
• 24 May 2016 Harvard Crimson article "Governing the Past: Faust the Historian".  Note:  In a retrospective on the presidency of Drew Faust at Harvard, her welcoming of ROTC is listed as one of her major achievements.
• 25 May 2016  Remarks at ROTC Commissioning by LTC Peter Godfrin, Commander of the Paul Revere Battalion
• 25 May 2016 Harvard Gazette article "Inspired to serve, and lead: 12 seniors honored at ROTC commissioning ceremony".  Note:  12 seniors honored at the ceremony. "It was the largest crop of commissioned officers at Harvard since 2010, President Drew Faust said in her remarks".
• 26 May 2016 Harvard Magazine article "Joining the “Long Crimson Line”".  Note: "2016 marks the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the National Defense Act of 1916, which established ROTC nationwide, as well as the centennial of the establishment of the “Harvard Regiment” that predated ROTC by several months."  Also, President Faust "said Harvard in turn would be participating in the Veterans Administration’s Yellow Ribbon Program by making additional funds available for the first time ever to an unlimited number of eligible students across the University."  David Gergen, J.D. ’67, professor of public service and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School also spoke.  "Citing Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus as his source, he praised Faust for being the only member of a select group of college presidents willing to begin working with the Obama administration on the eventual reintroduction of ROTC units to campus even before “Don’t ask, don’t tell” had been repealed."  Gergen said "The enlisted people know what they’re doing. Please listen to them, please respect them, please get to know them, get to know their lives, because this country needs to be drawn back together, and you, as military officers, are going to be some of the finest people, the most promising people, in the country to do that—once you understand how the rest of the country works, the rest of the country that’s so separated out from us. You can close those gaps.  Use these moments to think about America, the future of America, the place of America in the world. You can become the leaders of the future. We need you, we are hugely proud of you, and we count on you."
• 15 September 2016 GoLocalProv article "Brown Renewing ROTC Ties With Navy, Air Force After Campus Ban". Note: "In 2015, Brown faculty voted to renew the Navy and Air Force affiliations. The University signed new agreements with the service branches that will be celebrated at the Sept. 16 ceremony."
• 16 September 2016 WPRI TV report "Brown reinstates ties to ROTC that it cut during Vietnam War".  Note:  Some video from the ceremony at Brown is included.
• 17 September 2016 Associated Press article "Brown Reinstates Ties to ROTC after Vietnam War-era Cut".  Note:  The Navy and Air Force units for Brown students will be in Worcester Massachusetts, 40 miles away. 
• 1 November 2016 US Department of Defense "Carter Announces New Recruiting, ROTC Links to Force of the Future".  Note:  "To make sure ROTC keeps attracting great participants, the department will offer more graduate school scholarships -- especially for law and medical school -- for cadets who are college seniors, the secretary added.  More two- and three-year ROTC scholarships will be offered, he said, and the department will sponsor more high school students interested in science, technology, engineering or math to shadow ROTC cadets at schools that specialize in those fields. To make being a ROTC instructor more attractive to service members, the secretary is directing the military services to ensure their officer promotion and selection boards more appropriately value those who serve as ROTC instructors and not penalize them for it. "
• 1 November 2016 Harvard Crimson column "Repeating History" by Phillip M. Ramirez '18. Note:  The writer, a Naval ROTC student, criticizes Harvard for not having ROTC classes on campus.  However, this is allowed and was tried by Army ROTC recently and there were not enough students to make this practical.  ROTC does currently receive institutional support such as space for offices, physical education and classes.  Also, Harvard did not ban ROTC per se in 1969; rather, it refused to abide by the conditions of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964, forcing the military to withdraw. 
• 9 November 2016 Daily Pennsylvanian article "Some Penn athletes embrace opportunities of ROTC".  Note:  The article profile six ROTC students who are also on Penn's athletic teams.
• 10 November 2016 Harvard Gazette article "Harvard ROTC: Soldiers and Scholars".  Note:  One of the photos documents that the Air Force is holding some ROTC classes on the Harvard campus.
• 14 November 2016 YaleNews article "Campus events honor veterans and ROTC".  Note:  The article mentions "Other events on campus included ... a screening of “The Millionaires’ Unit,” about the First Yale Unit and the birth of U.S. naval aviation during World War I."
• 25 November 2016 Second Line of Defense article "Harvard Alumni and the Origins of US Military and Naval Aviation".  Note: "Following the start of World War I in August 1914, the war clouds on the European horizon motivated over 565 adventurous young men in the United States to volunteer to serve as military aviators for the British and French of which over 11% were Harvard alumni." 
• 7 December 2016 Princeton alumni Weekly article "Army, Navy Report Increases: More Freshmen Join ROTC Units".  Note: "Lt. Col. Kevin McKiernan, commanding officer of the Army ROTC unit, said the increase in freshman enrollment in part reflects staff efforts to reach out to high school seniors as they apply to the University."  There is joint academic and ROTC credit for one course: "McKiernan co-teaches a politics course with Professor Jacob Shapiro, “The Military Instrument of Foreign Policy,” which covers part of the Army ROTC curriculum and does count for academic credit."
• 29 December 2016 MIT News article "Martin York named U.S. Air Force Cadet of the Year".  Note:  In addition to his ROTC role, he was in the top 1% of his MIT class academically and "worked as a research assistant on the groundbreaking D-8 “Double-Bubble” design for a future commercial aircraft".

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