Penn ROTC Coverage

• 6 December 1968 Harvard Crimson article "ROTC Can Stay on Penn Campus Despite Loss of Academic Credit".
• 28 September 1973 Harvard Crimson article "A Survey of ROTC's Status in the Ivies".
• 31 March 2004 The Penn article "Reporter trains with ROTC".
• 23 February 2007 Chronicle of Higher Education article "Harvard's Historic Choice".  Note:  At Penn, Harvard President-elect Drew Faust "was one of a half-dozen professors who met each Tuesday at 7 a.m. during the late 1980s and early 90s to talk informally with the provost about such topics as the expansion of the medical school, the reorganization of the library, and the place of ROTC on the campus".
• 16 February 2009 Daily Pennsylvanian article "LGBT group protests military policy: Group says military recruitment on campus and U. subsidies to ROTC violate non-discrimination policy".  Note:  The protesters exercised their right to protest the military activities on campus, which were upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court decision on 6 March 2006.
• 15 May 2009 Daily Princetonian article "ROTC may seek credit for courses".  Note:  ROTC commander Lt. Col. John Stark, who has a PhD and is a lecturer in the history department, is planning to seek accreditation for ROTC senior-level military science courses.  Princeton Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee ’69 said there was an "unspoken agreement" and "clear understanding by both parties at the signing of the [University’s agreement with the program] that ROTC courses would not receive academic credit”.  The article did not quote from the University’s agreement with the Army, but VP Durkee provided the relevant text and his comments to Advocates for ROTC.  The Princetonian article also refers to Princeton and Cornell being the only Ivy League colleges with official on-campus Army ROTC.  In addition, Penn has on-campus Navy ROTC and Dartmouth has Army ROTC on campus, officially through "an extension school for Norwich University", but the Professors of Military Science have Dartmouth faculty appointments.
• 26 August 2010 Time Magazine article "Is ROTC Poised for a Comeback at Elite Colleges?"  Note:  "Michael Segal, a Harvard graduate and member of the coalition group Advocates for ROTC, argues that for schools like Stanford and Columbia, which have strong engineering programs, the benefits of bringing ROTC to these campuses could outweigh the costs of maintaining what will likely be smaller units there. "It may look on paper that these schools get half as much value as ROTC does at other programs, but we need some of these people," he says. "We need very thoughtful people in the military.""  In addition to the Ivy-based units mentioned in the article, Penn also has on campus Naval ROTC.
• 26 August 2010 Center for a New American Security blog post "Recruiting the Officer Corps".  Note:  "The U.S. Army, then, needs to be more intentional about recruiting officers outside the American South. It is no coincidence that the only combat arms officer commissioned into the U.S. Army from my class of 2,000+ at Penn was a white southern male."
• 30 November 2010 Columbia Spectator letter "Referring to the restriction on ROTC as a "ban" is misleading" by Allan Silver.  Note:  A Professor Emeritus of Sociology discusses a 14 November Spectator editorial and observes that "It is more accurate to say that these institutions effectively barred ROTC by requiring changes in its curriculum, credit arrangements, and commanding officers’ faculty status. In the charged atmosphere of the time, the strict application of existing legislation made it impossible for the military services to accept these changes... Today, ROTC programs at MIT, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania have resolved many or all of the curricular problems of four decades ago. After the repeal or effective reform of legal prohibitions against service by homosexuals, cooperative good will by Columbia and the military can resolve the remaining obstacles."
• 20 December 2010 AEI EnterpriseBlog item "DADT Repeal’s Implications for ROTC" by Cheryl Miller.  Note:  "Michael Segal at Secure Nation has some great suggestions as to how universities and the military can work together to enhance the ROTC curriculum, providing high-quality courses worthy of academic credit. Advocates should also work for closer ties at those universities that currently host ROTC units, but hold them at arm’s length: Princeton, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania. Much more can (and should) be done to integrate ROTC into mainstream campus life than merely hosting a program."
• 26 January 2011 Daily Pennsylvanian article "Transgender concerns enter ROTC debate".  Note:  Leaders of the LGBT community at Penn said that the military presence on Penn’s campus does not detract from the strength of the LGBT community and instead it ensures that the discussion regarding transgender equality in the military will continue.  "“There was no logical reason to keep gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from serving,” [vice chair of Finance and Development for the Lambda Alliance Hugh] Hamilton wrote. However, he added that there could be reasons to prevent individuals who are in the process of transitioning from one gender to another from serving in the armed forces.“Someone undergoing their transition is under enormous physical stress from hormone therapy as well as reconstructive surgery,” Hamilton wrote. Transitioning requires a psychologically supportive environment which certainly does not exist in wartime.”"
• 11 April 2012 Daily Pennsylvanian article "For students in Penn’s NROTC program, training a test of skills, endurance".  Note:  "Penn NROTC wants about 85 percent of its students to be engineers. Even students who study liberal arts must take two semesters of physics and two semesters of calculus as part of the program."
• 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.

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