Brown Stain
Projo letter to the editor from LTC Paul Dulchinos, a former Providence College ROTC advisor, alleges gross discrimination against members of a minority group at nearby Brown University … ROTC-Americans:
“The justification of a university is to be found in the service which it gives to the nation” — Dr. Charles Seymour, president of Yale University (1937-1951).
AS WE CELEBRATED the diverse and robust graduating classes last spring at local commencement ceremonies, there was one demographic conspicuously absent from Brown University’s august affair. For the third year in a row there was not a single graduate from the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program. In other words, of the last 9,000 Army ROTC officers commissioned at the various institutions of higher learning across America, there was not a single Brown-educated candidate.
What that means to the Brown legacy is that 25 years from now, Brown will not be relevant in shaping the most senior leadership of our largest military branch of service. There will not be a Brown equivalent of Gen. David Petraeus or Gen. Colin Powell.
Although Brown has not had a resident ROTC program since the Navy ROTC program left, in 1972, Brown students have always been eligible to participate in the cross-town Army ROTC program at Providence College since 1955. In the past this has been a very successful partnership, producing more than 190 Brown Army officers over the past 50 years. Unfortunately, the decline in Brown University student participation over the last 15 years has been staggering.
The core problem lies in the extremely exclusionary nature of Brown University undergraduate-admissions process. To produce future Army officers, you need to first admit them as freshmen to your institution. Army ROTC four-year scholarship recipients apply for the ROTC program right out of high school. With an admissions rate of only 14 percent at Brown, Army ROTC four-year-scholarship candidates are systematically overlooked (either by coincidence or by design). The last successful four-year Army ROTC scholarship recipient admitted to Brown University was in 1996. He went on to graduate and be commissioned as an Army officer in 2000. Since then Brown has produced only three Army ROTC officers despite graduating more than 12,800 students over this same period. In addition, none of these students were admitted as freshmen Army ROTC scholars.
Consequently, without an established goal or stated policy to protect this minority population, Army ROTC scholars are indiscriminately eliminated. Therefore the current downward trend in Brown student-body participation is expected to continue indefinitely. Given that the current president of Brown University, Dr. Ruth Simmons, has refused to meet with either the Army ROTC program director at Providence College or even the U.S. Army cadet command commander, Major Gen. W. Montague Winfield, concerning this matter during her tenure, it demonstrates that the highest levels of leadership at Brown are unconcerned with the plight of their Army ROTC students and that they do not want to improve the situation.
To add insult to injury, the majority of the Army ROTC four-year scholarship applicants denied admission to Brown over the last three years have possessed the school’s basic admissibility standards. However, without a demographical attribute to identify them as a desired market segment they become lost in the crowd. This is why Brown needs to establish an admission policy that will secure the inclusion of Army ROTC scholars in the Brown University undergraduate population at least at a level commensurate to the percentage resident in the nation’s general university population. Currently there is only one cadet in the program attending Brown. He was admitted to Brown during his sophomore year as a transfer student.
However, according to Brown University’s Academic Enrichment Web site: “Achieving academic excellence requires a commitment to diversity. Students educated in diverse environments have been found to learn better, to deal with complexity more readily, and to emerge with a greater understanding of how to participate productively in a pluralistic society. We hope to make Brown even more of a leader in the national effort to manage and learn from the rich diversity of the nation and the world.”
Unfortunately, this academic environment does not allow for the equal inclusion of those wishing to serve America in its military. Currently, less than 0.4 percent of the U.S. population is serving in any capacity in the U.S. Army, as a member of the Active or Reserve components.
Brown should desire that this under-represented minority also be reflected in its student population. To do this, Brown needs to reserve at least 2-3 seats every year for Army ROTC scholars in its entering freshman class. This would ensure that Brown could consistently produce a minimum of 1-2 officers a year. Given Brown’s overall undergraduate population of more than 6,400 students, this would not be a very arduous commitment.
The policy would be in keeping with the university’s current diversity objectives and might move Brown out of last place among its peers in the Ivy League for Army ROTC enrollment. It is the duty of all institutions of higher education (both public and private) to equally share in the mission to educate the future leaders of the nation’s military. As Brown’s total ROTC population has dwindled to a lone cadet, I would have to emphatically argue that Brown is derelict in this duty.
Paul C. Dulchinos, of Barrington, is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and a former Providence College professor of military science.
More here from the Brown Daily Herald, with comment from a Brown associate dean:
Associate Dean of the College Linda Dunleavy said during her two years as Brown’s adviser for ROTC, she’s never had an undergraduate approach her for information, but she has noticed increased efforts on behalf of the Providence College ROTC program to reach out to Brown students.
“They’ve been putting some pressure on various offices to try to see if they can come and actually leaflet on campus and recruit,” she said.
Gosh, they sound like insidious ROTC provocateurs. Pushing milcegenation. Her comment is a little odd, because these students seem to be interested:
The perennial debate over whether the Reserve Officer Training Corps should have a home on Brown’s campus may be reinvigorated with the creation of a new student group - tentatively called “Advocates for Brown ROTC” - calling for the military program’s reinstitution on College Hill.
Jason Carr ‘09 and Josh Teitelbaum ‘08 founded the group to take steps toward breaking down the campus community’s isolation from what they say is an important social institution.
This is a serious problem. Another quote makes it evident that the dearth of ROTC students on campus fuels negative stereotypes toward Military-Americans.
Annie Koenig ‘08, who participated in a panel debate last week hosted by an international relations seminar she is taking on the U.S. military, said she recognizes the current divide between the military and academia, but she said she doesn’t think ROTC will resolve it because the program is essentially incompatible with the liberal arts university in America.
“They’re serving two different purposes. A liberal arts education is to basically learn tools of inquiry and to diversify. What the military teaches you is completely the opposite. It’s a more didactic learning style. It’s officer-led and it teaches you to conform,” Koenig said.
Hat-tip to a pal who is an Ivy League ROTC advisor and two-tour Iraq combat vet. Meanwhile, in other ROTC discrimination:
Tufts Daily: ROTC students encounter administrative hurdles in seeking Tufts credit for their ROTC courses.
Previously, Harvard As Wart
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 2:15 pm on Tuesday, September 9, 2008
3 Responses to “Brown Stain”
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September 9th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Wow JC. As a former ROTC-American (at a Berkeley Wannabe in the 70’s), this is right up my alley. We were fairly discriminated against in our time. I hate to politicize. OK, I love to. I am fairly certain that none of the discrimination came from registered Republicans, one reason I can never bring myself to vote for the other SOB’s, no matter what the sins of the GOP. Oh, some of it (the most harmless) came from misguided fellow students. (In the 70’s, everybody was a liberal, man). The most insidious came from Marxist faculty. That is hurtful and confusing when you are 19. You only figure out later they weren’t anti-military, they were on the other side.
Looking back at age 52, after a career as a Navy helicopter pilot, I can find only irony. The university still has the gall to mail me asking for money. The people who called us “baby-killers” are the ones who actually advocate killing babies as public policy. My crews and I had the opportunity to rescue people, deliver humanitarian aid, and yes, contribute to the projection of offensive sea power in the national interest. The people I served with, starting with my ROTC mates, are still the best people I ever met. And as for the “caring and sharing” souls who thought it was noble to harass young men about choosing military service, I don’t have much time for them. I don’t wish them ill, I wish them enlightenment, as a result of my liberal arts education, which the bimbo above thinks is wasted on military trogs like me.
September 9th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Funny that the first post I read on your page today hits me squarely between the eyes. I am both a Providence College Army ROTC graduate and a former ROTC instructor. I taught in Boston University’s Army ROTC program from 2003-2006 (with a short Iraq deployment in the middle).
I don’t think the problem will be solved until - like the Greatest Generation - the Baby Boomers start dying at the rate of 1,000 per day.
Sorry, but it’s really that bad. I say this as a former instructor at a school with a long (but unfortunately blemished) record of support for ROTC programs. The level of support BU provides to all 3 service ROTC programs far, far exceeds what is expected and far exceeds what any Ivy League school anywhere in the country provides to ROTC.
But even at BU, every single year without fail I would have 3-4 freshman students come up to me and ask for advice in handling professors who were anti-military and openly made disparaging statements about ROTC in the classroom. My advice was always the same, “Be an adult. If you can’t, be a professional. Ignore it.”
In other words, I had 18 year-olds acting more like adults than the alleged adults on the BU faculty. These are scholars who would be horrified to find their peers injecting a personal bias anywhere into a scholarly work, but can with a straight face, make the argument that injecting their biases into a classroom represents the pinnacle of academic freedom.
Was it everywhere at BU? No. Again, the Administration supported our detachment very well. But it happened often enough for my Cadets to know the faculty was generally anti-military even if the prejudice wasn’t explicitly stated.
I am not really sure why my Cadets should have had to put up with that. Have you ever noticed that people who bitch the most about the military have the least reason to do so? They don’t know anyone in the military, they are not subject to a call-up, the fact that an Army defends them at all allows them to engage in whatever pursuit they choose. They don’t get shot at - someone else gets that honor in their stead. Their lives are their own. They’re not in danger. Why do they bitch about the fact that others have chosen to take that burden unto themselves?
But I digress.
For schools such as Harvard and (especially) Brown it is a point of honor to be anti-military. The fact they know so damn little about the military matters not at all to them. Remember, these are people who think joining the military is a sign of ignorance. Commenting authoritatively on the military while never having served oneself?
Well, that’s brilliance to them.
Here’s the proof from your linked piece, “They’re serving two different purposes. A liberal arts education is to basically learn tools of inquiry and to diversify. What the military teaches you is completely the opposite. It’s a more didactic learning style. It’s officer-led and it teaches you to conform,’ Koenig said.”
Miss Koenig could not brandish her ignorance anymore forthrightly unless she stripped naked, bought a prime time slot on three networks, and read that statement aloud.
Sure, the military is all about obedience - in the beginning. Why? Because when you’re under fire it’s not a debate. You listen and do. You need to learn that quickly.
It’s also done so you can learn to get over yourself. (Something Miss Koenig could clearly use.)
But in my entire 21-year career I’ve never, ever, not once, been told, directed, or ordered to suppress my thoughts or opinions. Dissent was encouraged, even demanded. That was the case because most commanders realize they don’t know everything and their rank doesn’t give them a lock on good ideas. They would seek differing perspectives and ideas before launching anything from a combined arms attack, to a collection drive for Army Emergency Relief.
However, once a decision is made, that’s it. It meant the commander had considered all input and made his (or her) decision. From that point on you were expected to enforce it. Period.
Now how exactly is that any different from any place one will ever work? I would argue that even in academia one does not enjoy the freedom to “say what you mean and mean what you say” until after tenure is granted.
No, the problem of anti-military bias will not be solved until the Boomers die and stop passing their poison onto the next generation. (Oh, and I’m from the last official year of the baby boom .)
With this level of “support” among our “elites” we’re lucky this society produces anyone at all who wishes to defend it. But produce we do.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
It is kind of fascinating. In ages past, elites knew that they could only stay in power if they held the robe or the sword. Our so-called educated elite disdains both thinking that religion is the opiate of the masses and that the Military is an enemy camp.
I am not betting on their continued grip on power.