Demoting the Military

The Yale College faculty last week declared war on the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. It voted to take academic credit away from ROTC courses and to strip officers commanding the units of their professorial rank. Swift approval by the Yale Corporation seemed all but certain.

Yale thus joins other colleges that have made ROTC an entirely extracurricular affair. Although Yale has given academic credit for ROTC for more than 50 years, Arthur W. Galston, professor of biology and chairman of the faculty course of study committee, insisted that the decision was based "solely on the academic merits." Galston and his colleagues have apparently just discovered that "ROTC is like singing in the Whiffenpoofs--a perfectly fine activity, but one that we don't think merits any academic standing." Not all professors were even that dispassionate. J. P. Trinkaus, another biologist and master of Branford College, wrote loftily in the Yale Daily News in December that "much of the philosophy of the military runs counter to that of a university, and besides, low-level trade-school courses have no place at Yale."

Although the editors of the News and other outspoken students agreed with the faculty, it is unlikely that many of the 147 undergraduates enrolled in ROTC think of the modern military as a low-level trade. Most are convinced that the faculty is being inconsistent. Says Hewitt Chapman, a junior taking Navy ROTC: "I think the faculty is playing politics. There are plenty of other courses that don't deserve credit, and the faculty shouldn't decide on the basis of political prejudice which ones do."

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