Yale College Dean Mary Miller announced Monday the chair of a faculty committee that will review the academic issues surrounding the return of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to campus.
Engineering professor Gary Haller will lead the committee as it reviews policies that the Yale faculty adopted in 1969 and 1970, shortly after Army and Navy ROTC units left campus, that were designed to limit the organization’s future role at Yale. The four resolutions, which remain in effect today, prevent Yale from granting credit to students for ROTC courses, awarding faculty rank to ROTC instructors, replacing ROTC financial aid with University aid for students who drop out of a unit, and providing space on campus for ROTC training.
“[The committee’s] purpose is to review the four resolutions and determine their pertinence and relevance today,” Miller said in an interview Monday.
Miller said in the statement that she will also seek student input on ROTC’s return to campus and will soon announce to students how they can share their input with the committee. She added in an interview that she will ask students about how administrators should generate interest in ROTC participation among the student body should a unit be formed on campus.
“This is an important first step forward on an issue of key importance to our campus and community,” Miller said in the statement. “I strongly encourage our students to share their suggestions and concerns with the committee.”
Following the December repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — the military policy that prevented openly gay men and women from serving in the armed forces — University President Richard Levin said Yale would open discussions with the military over ROTC’s return to campus. Since then, General Counsel Dorothy Robinson, Vice President and Secretary Linda Lorimer and Miller have been negotiating with the military over the program’s return, Levin said in a March 21 interview.
ROTC units were first formed at Yale during World War I.
David Burt contributed reporting.