University of Virginia Library

A Rationale For ROTC

It seems that military people everywhere
are high on the most unpopular lists these
days, and ROTC personnel are no exception.
ROTC is under scrutiny or attack wherever it
exists, and the University is providing no
exception. The general atmosphere of curriculum
re-evaluation lends itself easily to
disparagement of the various programs of
military training. Moreover, the current wave of
anti-military sentiment caused by the war, the
ABM, and the draft has a tendency to lend
itself to emotional and irrational attacks on
the program.

Virginia has long been a school with
particular affinity for ROTC. This has been
due to the intellectual and social backgrounds
of the student body, the tradition of the
South in general, and the beneficent attitude
of the faculty and administration. But undercurrents
of dissent are coming to the surface
now. ROTC is under pressure to change and in
its own ponderous way, the military is moving
towards making the program more acceptable
to its critics.

Some critics, though, would tell the military
not to waste its time. They feel that there
is no place for war training in a University
setting, That the standards of the academic
world are in total conflict with those of the
soldier. In many ways they are right, but they
tend to overlook several important considerations.
One is that ROTC is a valuable means
of exerting civilian influence in the officer
corps. Without the influx of civilian personnel,
a dangerous interbreeding of the military
mentality could occur which would further
polarize the defense establishment and those
who seek to control it. These critics ignore the
right of the students who wish to enter the
program to do so in a free community.

But they raise some valid points concerning
accreditation. Under the contract that the
University signs with various service branches,
President Shannon has the power to accept or
reject the officer assigned to teach in the
various military science departments. The
faculty has the power of review over the
course material that the Pentagon wants to
teach here. But the power of the University to
control the military faculty and curriculum is
marginal and only rarely applied. It is complicated
by the political and moral questions
that refuse to diverse themselves from what
should be a question of academic procedure. The most common gripe concerns the amount
of credit that the University is willing to give
for ROTC courses. Should credit given primarily
by the Pentagon count towards a degree
from the University of Virginia?

The military, which needs its supply of
reserve officers, has been in many cases that it
should not. The Naval Program here, for
instance, requires 18 hours of course work but
asks the University to give credit for only 12.
The other service branches are beginning to
follow suit.

It would seem, however, that a compromise
is in the offing. As the military
modernizes, its manpower needs become more
and more like those of a civilian endeavor.
They need computer programmers more than
celestial navigators, and they seem to be
willing to let the University's civilian programs
do the training for them, phasing in courses in
international relations, and phasing out things
like the M-16 rifle. The compromise is a good
one. It should be effected as quickly as
possible, for the time is coming when ROTC
will have to prove its academic merit or
expect its participants to carry far more than
the normal course load if they expect to
graduate.