Approximately 80 students stormed and took over Parkhurst Hall for 12 hours in 1969 to protest Dartmouth's ROTC program. Opposition to the College's military ties and the trustees' conflicting decision to sustain the Reserve Officer Training Corps in a time of such prominent anti-war movements drove protestors to occupy the administration building.
Although the ROTC was kicked off campus in the Vietnam era, it did return -- less prominent and less subject to controversy than before -- in the mid 1980s.
Currently, with eight student members and one captain, the program's low-profile presence elicits only occasional controversy and debate -- and certainly doesn't draw a crowd of 1000 to the front of Parkhurst for a protest takeover. Even as America's war against terrorism broke out, student interest in or aversion to the campus' ROTC program has been far from passionate.
The 1969 Protest
Many anti-war Dartmouth students in the Vietnam era centered their protest movement on the campus' army reserve training program.
A group from the time called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) collaborated with teachers in a fervent attempt to hasten the administration's removal of the ROTC from Dartmouth. Like-minded organizations at other Ivy League campuses were rallying for the same mission.
John Spritzler '68, a leader of SDS, told The Dartmouth that he participated in candlelight vigils every week around the Green in protest against the Vietnam War. A passionate participant of the Parkhurst takeover, he recalls when the group realized they had the authority to seize the building and stir up such an anti-ROTC movement.
A group of conservative students "called for a pro-war demonstration for a Wednesday afternoon, which was exactly the time when the anti-war people had a peace vigil," he recalled. "I remember we dreaded that day approaching because we thought we'd be swamped by pro-war students against us. When the day finally came, there were about 50 people in the pro-war line and about 1500 people in anti-war line that formed a snake all the way around Green."
He said that was a decisive moment in Dartmouth's anti-war movement.
"From that day on we knew we were the majority," he said. "That's why we had the anti-ROTC movement in the first place."
The ROTC's noticeable position on campus in the 1960s sparked a series of debates and referendums at the time. Nearly 400 students were enrolled in the program, which granted participants sizeable scholarships and course credit. These advantages to being a member of the training program heightened the controversy over the decision of how to reform or phase it out.
Students' and teachers' opinions on ROTC separated into two general categories, according to SDS member and Parkhurst protestor, Stephen J. Stoll '68.
"There were students who felt the ROTC was incompatible with a liberal arts education," he remembered.
The American Civil Liberties Union backed this disapproval of mandatory ROTC programs. According to an article that ran in The Dartmouth on March 4, 1969, the ACLU said such programs "threaten the values of free inquiry and academic autonomy which are at the heart of academic freedom."
Stoll said the other general opinion -- which he shared -- was that the ROTC was an "instrument of the U.S. military."
He said the College should not have been in support of the U.S. military at a time when so many students saw it as "morally reprehensible."
Although most students who forcefully ejected administrators from Parkhurst and seized the building were arrested and sent to jail, their goals eventually came to fruition.
By the early 1970s, the ROTC was completely abolished from Dartmouth's campus.
"There were some demands the College agreed to make toward the military that the military wouldn't accept. As a result, ROTC was taken off campus," Stoll said.
ROTC Returns
About a decade after the end of America's war in Vietnam, College President David McLaughlin allowed the return of the ROTC to campus in the early 1980s. However, only the army branch chose to start up again at Dartmouth. The Naval and Air-Force branches have not reemerged since the program was permitted back on campus.
Captain Gregory Goth, whose primary duty is at the Norwich Academy in Vermont, leads the student members of Dartmouth's ROTC program in its weekly classroom sessions.
Mike Breen '02 runs the training and physical sessions in his role as the cadet company commander.
ROTC does not require an intense, strict regimen of training, but focuses more on the study of military tactics, debates over its status and talks about current events that concern the army. Once a week, the group ventures into the fields that surround Hanover to train and practice essential skills, such as camouflaging and navigating with compasses.
The ROTC is "designed to give college undergraduates training in basic military leadership ... and to educate college students in general about the military," said Breen. "We have actually had some total anti-military people join up for a month," he added, to learn about different aspects of the military.
The Army provides scholarships for students who apply to join their campus's ROTC program, on the condition that these students serve in the U.S. Army on active duty and in the Army Reserve Corps for a total of eight years after graduation.
Breen will be an Officer for the Army next year, and John Craven '03, also a member, is in the process of confirming his contract that will destine him for a similar role.
Harry Camp '04, who signed a contract before his freshman year, decided before returning to school this fall to revoke his commitment.
While Camp was deterred by the fact that his keeping the full scholarship would "incur another four years of active duty," he said he would still consider joining the Army for a few years.
"The only reason I got out wasn't because my military views changed," he said. He added that the events of Sept. 11 did not affect his views -- he actually made his decision before that date. "If anything, that would have made me more inclined," to stay with the program, he said.
Interest in joining the ROTC has not noticeably increased this year, according to Breen.
"People are viewing the military in a different way now," said Craven. "The idea of serving your country is coming back a bit."
Continuing Controversy
The modern-day stance is vastly different from the campus environment of the 60s and 70s when the majority of community members opposed the country's war effort.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, opinion polls have shown high levels of support for U.S. military action, and according to the Gallup Organization, public approval for the military campaign has run between 86 and 92 percent since the government launched its anti-terrorism effort.
In other words, even if Dartmouth students and other Americans are not rushing to join up with the army, citizens are generally supportive and more in tuned with the country's military engagements than they were during Vietnam.
Stoll, who was so active during the late-1960s, acknowledged that "the focus on ROTC would not be the same now as it was then ... at a time when most Americans were opposed to war efforts."
Spritzler, however, remains adamant in his radically anti-war stance: "The government fundamentally uses violence to enforce their policies and the ROTC is a part of this system of force ... it is what they use to control people to make sure this stays an unequal society."
His voice might have seemed centrist in the 1970s, but today, his stance that "the whole U.S. Army should be abolished" is very extreme. He said the reason why he so adamantly opposes the army is that the country "would be better off if millions of people round the world didn't blame Americans for their problems."
In 1994, a series of faculty votes once again supported the elimination of ROTC from Dartmouth, due to their opposition to the military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy regarding homosexuals. Harvard University recently banned the ROTC on campus due to their concordant objection to this military's policy.
In his article entitled "Crimson Shame" published in the conservative National Review, Stanley Kurtz contested Harvard's decision. The ROTC was removed, he wrote, '"Because of a foolish and contemptible hatred of the military by a bunch of spoiled, elitist, and decidedly unpatriotic students who do not understand that everything they have depends upon the willingness of courageous young men to defend this country.'"
Breen said that while "Americans have a historic distrust of the military when we're not at war," an ROTC program, no matter how small it may be, is indispensable.
There is "underlying friction between ROTC and the administration that has to do with prevailing attitudes about the military in our society," said Craven, who considers such tensions routine. Craven grew up on Army bases in Germany in the U.S, as his father served on active duty for the military for 20 years.
Dartmouth is not currently considering removal of ROTC, although the program is kept conveniently inconspicuous.
Breen, who deals with a huge lack of school support, contends, "It would be a mistake to kick ROTC off campus if you truly believe that your school is a place that successfully educates people in values you want to educate them in." If the school "thinks ROTC is flawed, they should want people to go into the military and change it."
