To the Editor:
The Dartmouth's Nov. 14 article, "Apathy replaces the controversy that surrounded ROTC during the Vietnam era, few students choose ROTC today," is conspicuously one-sided. The reporter took great pains to interview members of the Students for a Democratic Society from that era (a number of whom were jailed for contempt of court in the aftermath of the Parkhurst occupation). However, the reporter failed to elicit the views of Dartmouth students of that "era" who were ROTC cadets at the time and who were adversely affected by the College's cowardly decision to eject all ROTC programs from the campus.
I was one of those cadets. ROTC was thrown off the campus at the end of my sophomore year and, as a result, I was only able to complete two years of the U.S. Army ROTC program. The College did absolutely nothing to ensure that we could continue the ROTC program in graduate school and ultimately be commissioned as officers. We had to fend for ourselves. Fortunately, thanks to a fellow cadet and classmate who was one of his constituents, we were given substantial help in that regard by the Hon. F. Edward Hebert, the late Congressman from Louisiana who, for many years, had served as the powerful Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. (I recall writing during the summer of 1970 to a particularly outspoken Dartmouth professor who had "collaborated" with the SDS "to hasten the administration's removal of ROTC from Dartmouth." I described our problem and pleaded for assistance. I did not receive even the courtesy of a reply.)
As a responsible newspaper, The Dartmouth should have presented a balanced, even-handed, and fair analysis of the 1969-70 ROTC controversy that at least acknowledged that there was more than one side to the story. I am disappointed, at best, that it failed to do so.
