National ROTC Coverage: 2017

• 18 January 2017 MIT News article "MIT Air Force ROTC Detachment 365 named best in the nation".  Note: "Among other accomplishments, Detachment 365 achieved the highest overall grade point average of 3.545/4.0 and physical fitness scores of 97.42/100. "
• 20 January 2017 Harvard Gazette article "The long Crimson line: University archives depict Harvard military history".  Note:  The exhibit of four centuries of Harvard and the military runs until 21 February.
• 3 February 2017 Harvard Crimson article "At Exhibit, Faust Honors Harvard’s Military History".  Note:  Harvard President Drew Faust showcased an exhibit about Harvard's long history with the armed services.  "The name of the exhibit itself—“To Serve Better Thy Country”—is part of the inscription etched onto Dexter Gate, which students walk beneath to exit the Yard: “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”"  In her remarks, President Faust noted the relative absence of material from the Vietnam war era, and attendees were given a flyer saying "If you would like to donate material, or have any questions or ideas to share, please contact the University Archives at (617) 495-5961".
• 8 February 2017 Stanford Daily article "Cadets discuss history, challenges of ROTC at Stanford ".  Note:  The article describes the 27 hour a week educational and training committment of Army ROTC students at Stanford, lengthened by the students having to commute to the unit at Santa Clara University.
• 23 May 2017 Harvard Business Review article "What I Learned from Transforming the U.S. Military’s Approach to Talent".  Note: Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter writes "too many talented students did not know about ROTC until they were already on campus. So the Defense Department will now offer more two- and three-year ROTC scholarships to students interested in joining after their freshman or sophomore years."
• 24 May 2017 Harvard Gazette article "Departing as leaders: Praise, counsel, gratitude for six seniors at ROTC commissioning ceremony".  Note:  Gen. John Hyten ’81 "recalled his own commissioning, which took place at MIT because Harvard had ended ROTC’s formal University presence during the Vietnam War, and praised Faust for her efforts to return ROTC to campus, starting in 2011."
• 24 May 2017 Harvard Magazine article "To Lead Must Necessarily Mean to Serve".  Note:  Gen. John Hyten ’81 discussed the oath for officers: "the cool part about that oath is that it swears allegiance to the ideals written down on a piece of paper—not to a king, not to a monarch, not to a political party, not to a president—to a Constitution."
• 24 May 2017 speech by Harvard President Drew Faust "2017 Remarks at ROTC Commissioning Ceremony".  Note: She said: "our free and open society and our democracy are dependent on citizens’ trust. Yet individuals and institutions are unlikely to be trusted if they seem to be only about themselves. To lead must necessarily mean to serve... Only when there is trust can there be effective leadership."
• 17 August 2017 Dorchester Reporter article "From two Neponset boys, a vote for ROTC and the value of a military life".  Note:  Brothers Patrick and Michael Murray did ROTC at Harvard, joining the traditions in their family and Harvard's long history of military service.
• 1 September 2017 WPRI news article "RWU president: Trump’s military transgender ban could ‘end’ ROTC program".  Note:  The president of Roger Williams University said that changes in the military policy towards transgender people would run afoul of university policies on discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation and could lead to the termination of ROTC at the university.
• 19 September 2017 Yale Daily News article "ROTC at Yale".  Note:  The article gives a muddled history of why ROTC left Yale.  The sequence was that protests against ROTc resulted in termination of academic credit and faculty appointments, and as a result the program not longer met the requirements of the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964, and had to be terminated.
• 27 October 2017 On Point article "The Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps: A Hundred Years Old and Still Going Strong" by Colonel Woolf Gross, USA-Ret.  Note:  The article describes the inception of ROTC at a 1913 meeting at the Harvard Club of New York of Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood and former President Theodore Roosevelt, as well as others, including Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell.  It also describes the 1916 Defense Act, which turned this plan into legislation, and its implementation: "the very first ROTC unit off the mark was Harvard’s. The Roosevelt-Wood-Lowell triumvirate ensured that the university would become the laboratory for the program. Taking the lead as is so often the case resulted in significant overkill with the Harvard Yard becoming, at least initially, a sort of auxiliary West Point. Under President Lowell’s guiding hand, virtually the entire student body became the basis for participation in the ROTC program."  The refinement of ROTC in the National Defense Act of 1920 is also described.
• Fall 2017 The Amherst Story article "Veterans’ Days".  Note:  THe article describes how veterans and Amherst's first Army ROTC student in 20 years, Rebecca Segal '18, are connecting the campus to the military in innovative ways.

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