ROTC Might Play Hard-to-Get on Campus

Reserve Officer Training Corps units are not rushing back to every college campus that dis-invited them over policy differences including the just-rescinded ban on serving while openly gay, The New York Times reports. President Barack Obama’s high-profile call on Tuesday to ramp up military training and recruiting at higher-education institutions is, for various reasons, likely to proceed slowly.

“I would be the most surprised person in the world if the military came back to Harvard or Yale,” said Diane Mazur, a University of Florida law professor and former Air Force officer. “The military doesn’t have the staffing or the funding, and it’s very expensive to start a new R.O.T.C. detachment.”

Besides, most campuses already have military recruiters if not fully staffed R.O.T.C. units, and two that explicity barred recruiters — Vermont Law School and William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota — say they will relent as soon as “don’t ask, don’t tell” is formally in place.

Meanwhile, Ivy League schools that have frozen out reserve officer programs — culture clashes that in some cases date to the Vietnam era — claim to want R.O.T.C. back. Leaders at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Columbia all have said the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” improves the climate for military-campus relations.