Duke ROTC Coverage

• 2005 "The Organizational Evolution of Cadet Command, 1990-2003" by Dr. Arthur T. Coumbe, pp 515-51 in "An Army at War: Change in the Midst of Conflict: The Proceedings of the Combat Studies Institute 2005 Military History Symposium".  Note:  Major General John T.D. “Rusty” Casey, the Army ROTC Cadet Command Commander from the summer of 2000 through the summer of 2003, wanted to organize the ROTC along functional rather than geographic lines, with an Elite Brigade that included prestigious schools such as Princeton, MIT, Cornell, Duke and Johns Hopkins.  "Just as the Elite Brigade was about to be implemented, however, a retired general officer who was a member of the ROCKS, an organization devoted to the mentoring of African American junior officers, learned of Casey’s plans and reportedly intervened with the TRADOC commander to block its formation. The general feared that the creation of this unit would greatly weaken the position of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) within the ROTC structure by siphoning off scholarship dollars to high cost, prestigious schools. His fears may have been justified because Casey was widely regarded as a great proponent of bolstering ROTC’s presence in the nation’s elite universities and of lowering the program’s presence in less competitive schools."
• 3 August 2009 New York Times article "With Enough Soldiers, the Army Is Looking for a Few Good Officers".  Note:  The Army is "swollen with young recruits but short on officers to lead them" and starting a marketing campaign featuring Gen. David Petraeus and "high-ranking corporate executives with experience as Army officers".  One ad features a Duke Army ROTC graduate.
• 29 September 2010 Lecture at Duke University by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.  Note:  Secretary Gates said "The state of Alabama, with a population of less than 5 million, has 10 Army ROTC host programs.  The Los Angeles metro area, population over 12 million, has four host ROTC programs.  And the Chicago metro area, population 9 million, has 3.  It makes sense to focus on places where space is ample and inexpensive, where candidates are most inclined sign up and pursue a career in uniform.  But there is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally, and geographically have less and less in common with the people they have sworn to defend.  I’d like to close by speaking about another narrow sliver of our population, those attending and graduating from our nation’s most selective and academically demanding universities, such as Duke.  In short, students like many of you.  Over the past generation many commentators have lamented the absence of ROTC from the Ivy League and other selective universities.  Institutions that used to send hundreds of graduates into the armed forces, but now struggle to commission a handful of officers every year.  University faculty and administrators banned ROTC from many elite campuses during the Vietnam War and continued to bar the military based on the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law – with Duke being a notable and admirable exception with your three host programs.  I am encouraged that several other comparable universities – with the urging of some of their most prominent alumni, including the President of the United States – are at least re-considering their position on military recruiting and officer training – a situation that has been neither good for the academy or the country. But a return of ROTC back to some of these campuses will not do much good without the willingness of our nation’s most gifted students to step forward.  Men and women such as you."
• 8 October 2010 Inside Higher Ed article "Not Everyone Is AWOL".  Note:  The article lists numbers of students in ROTC programs at several top colleges.  Lt. Col. Peter Oertel, commander of Duke's Air Force ROTC unit, said “There is general support for the military ... People are accepting, but don’t go one way or another, this is another diversity issue for a lot of them and they respect us.”  Lt. Col. John R. Stark, head of Army ROTC at Princeton, said “We are not looked down on, we are not promoted”.

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