In the wake of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the issue has resurfaced about the banning of the ROTC (haven’t a clue? everything you need to know about the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps here) on Columbia’s campus. This has been a contentious subject in recent years on campus. Here is a brief history:

• ROTC left Columbia in 1969, due to fallout resulting from ROTC presence on campus after Vietnam War. Some context on how to understand the “myth of the ROTC ban” and what language to use when discussing ROTC.
• Read up on the Solomon Amendment, which allows the Secretary of Defense to deny federal grants, including research grants, to universities that prohibit ROTC on their campuses. Here’s the full text of the Solomon Amendment.
• Since that time, students who want to participate in the program have enrolled at St John’s or Fordham’s sites. Several students take part in ROTC every year, including BC Senior Natalie Lopez-Barnard, who described her experiences in a Spec op-ed last month (as did Izumi Devalier in a 2005 issue of the Blue and White).
• In late 2001, an ROTC advocacy movement started at Columbia, led by Sean Wilkes, a Columbia student enrolled in ROTC, and Eric Chen, a veteran.
• PrezBo issued a statement on military recruitment at the Law School in 2002 here.
• In 2005, the University senate overwhelmingly voted against the restoration of the program on campus, by 51 votes to 13 (not 3!), with 5 abstentions, principally because of objections to the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy.
• The issue resurfaced again in fall of 2008, when it emerged that student councils were organizing a referendum on the Navy ROTC program on campus.
• PrezBo, who had voted against the motion in 2005, issued the following statement in response to the topic being raised by John McCain at ServiceNation in fall 2008:

In 2005, the University Senate voted overwhelmingly against formally inviting ROTC onto campus. Senate members may have had a variety of reasons for their votes, but the record and official reports make it reasonably clear that the predominant reason was one of adhering to a core principle of the University: that we will not have programs on the campus that discriminate against students on the basis of such categories as race, gender, military veteran status, or sexual orientation. Under the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy of the Defense Department, openly gay and lesbian students could or would be excluded from participating in ROTC activities. That is inconsistent with the fundamental values of the University. A number of our peer institutions have taken a similar position.

• In the run-up to the student debate, there was a considerable media frenzy from both sides, including professors who published pro and anti statements in the Spectator.
• After contention over the student poll, the issue eventually died down.
• Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a talk on campus in April 2010 addressing the ROTC debate. There’s a video of the helpful Q&A on ROTC here.
• When the renewed debate over DADT gained momentum this fall, there began to be more murmurs about the possibility of reinstating ROTC in the event that the policy was repealed. In his September fireside chat, PrezBo affirmed: “if DADT is repealed, ROTC may be invited back.”
• In October it emerged in student councils that the University Senate was once again thinking of reviving the issue.
• The University Senate recently compiled an overview of ROTC and its Columbia history and supplemental materials.
• In response to yesterday’s repeal of DADT, PrezBo issued the following statement:

This is an historic development for a nation dedicated to fulfilling its core principle of equal rights. It also effectively ends what has been a vexing problem for higher education, including at Columbia — given our desire to be open to our military, but not wanting to violate our own core principle against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. We now have the opportunity for a new era in the relationship between universities and our military
services.

Picture via advocatesforrotc.org

When the results of the NROTC survey were released last week, students complained that the results had been combined for CC, SEAS, and GS. While the breakdown may no longer matter that much, Bwog has finally obtained the percentage breakdown by school:

Combined with Barnard’s results, this means that two schools voted for, and two schools against, with the depth of opposition in Barnard and the size of the CC vote making the difference. Again, not that it matters any more.

Tomorrow’s opinion section of the Wall Street Journal features a familiar byline: a one Mr. Learned Foote, CC 2011 President.

Foote, speaking as a gay pro-ROTC student, said that he felt conflicted in his eventual decision to back repealing the ROTC ban. “I wanted to fight discrimination, but I also wanted Columbia to restore its relationship with a fundamental American institution,” he said.

Foote argued that if students are unhappy with the current DADT policy, they would be wise to permit the return of ROTC to campus, to influence change “from the bottom up.” He concludes by stating that since Columbia is “a university funded in part by taxpayer dollars, we cannot excuse ourselves from actively engaging with the military.” 

When released last Monday, it was unclear how the NROTC results would affect the University Senate proceeding with the issue. Not only were the results controversially tallied, but they were not broken down for three of the four schools (Barnard being the exception). 

However, Council and Senate sources confirm to Bwog that NROTC will not even be presented to the Senate. Whether individual school results will be released for CC, SEAS, and GS is still unknown.

As the NROTC results are being discussed and debated, it’s likely that the term margin of error is going to get thrown around. So, what is the margin of error? According to Jon Hill, Bwog’s Nate Silver Correspondent of Mathematical Wizardry, there is none. Here’s why:

Votes counted: 2,971

Undergraduate enrollment (2007 [2008 figure was unavailable]): 7,411

At a 95 percent confidence level:

= [1.96 * ((0.5)/sqrt(2971))] = 1.80 percentage points



With finite population correction:

= sqrt[(7411-2971)/(7411-1)] * 1.80 = 1.39 percentage points

Read more…

Hot on the heels of the CC/SEAS/GS results, Barnard’s numbers came in just a few moments ago. Here’s how they look:

According to SGA President Sarah Besnoff: “The results of this vote indicate that this is an issue that will be discussed in the University Senate.  Our University Senator will use these results when discussing student sentiment on the topic.  Because of the clear majority for “no” votes, should our University Senator be asked to vote on the issue, she will vote “no” in accordance with these results.” 

Keep in mind that Barnard’s tally isn’t subject to the same objections as that of the other three schools, as students used their UNIs to vote via their eBear accounts (Barnard’s SSOL).

In a statement to the GS student body, GSSC President Brody Berg expressed skepticism about the results of the NROTC survey, writing that “I believe that this poll result is meaningless due to the huge number of apparently fraudulent votes.” Although almost 2000 fraudulent votes were removed (including one student who voted 276 times) by matching one ID with one vote, Berg expressed skepticism that this strategy was adequate, further noting that “the votes thrown out were done with no supervision.”

“Even though the side I support ‘won,’” he concluded, “due to the huge number of fraudulent votes, myself and the Executive Board of the General Studies Student Council believe both General Studies and the Columbia community at large would be better served on this controversial issue with a poll whose results we can trust.” Earlier in the day, CCSC president George Krebs had expressed confidence in the result, writing in his CCSC email that “Multiple votes were not counted. If a student attempted to vote multiple times, only the last vote they cast was counted.”

Bwog notes that many of the multiple results probably came from students sharing links with each other, as occurred with the Democrats (who sent a listserve email with one person’s link) and Bwog itself. If the last vote was counted, then the last person to use that link would be the one whose vote counted. In addition, questions about the ability to use others’ links and “hack the survey” remain unanswered.

Berg’s full e-mail after the jump. Bwog thinks this issue may not be over. Read more…

Final results for the NROTC vote were just announced for three of the four undergraduate schools (CC, SEAS, and GS), with an extremely close result. From CCSC president George Krebs’s weekly email:

“The NROTC poll was closed at 9 am Monday morning and here’s the tally:

We sent out 6913 email invitations, including all CC, SEAS, and GS

undergraduate students. We received 2971 valid votes, representing 43% of the population.

1463 YES, 49.24%;

1502 NO, 50.56%;

6 ABSTAIN, 0.20%.

There were concerns about students being able to vote multiple times.  The Student Development and Activities office, which compiled the results, have assured us that one UNI was given one vote. Multiple votes were not counted. If a student attempted to vote multiple times,  only the last vote they cast was counted.”

Results for Barnard students, who used a different poll that closed later in the day, expect numbers to start pourng in around noon today.

The results of last week’s ROTC survey should be released later today. Before they are, Bwog encourages you to do some close-to-home back-reading on the issue–below, we’ve re-run Izumi Devalier’s article from the November 2005 issue of The Blue and White titled “Embedded in New York: Or, How I Learned to Stop Whining and Love ROTC.”

The average Columbia student knows about as much about ROTC as she knows about assembling a rifle. Guns don’t kill people, the thinking goes: ROTC students kill people.

 As for what they do when they’re not killing people (which, as it turns out, is always), most students draw a blank. To answer this question, I embedded myself with Columbia’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps for a month, blending in about as well as a student clad in camouflage blends in on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk. Read more…

Ooh, what’s going on over at Fox News? Much the same thing that’s happening here, in fact! It’s a debate about ROTC at Columbia, with a special Fox twist. And by “twist”, we mean that they chose a photo of a 1972 student riot to accompany the article.

But no matter, let’s see what the Good Ship Fox has to add to the matter. Well, for one, they talked to Avi Edelman, he of the Dems and EAAH. “I think we need to say, ‘No, we’re not gonna bring it back right now because of discrimination. Let’s work to end “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” on a federal level. Let’s make sure people know what our objection is and then let’s fix it,’” Edelman said.

Read more…

A tech-savvy commenter speculated that after “clearing their cookies” (a term we’ll define for the computer illiterate in just a minute), voters can change their personal survey ID number to someone else’s, which in theory would mean that anyone would be able to vote multiple times. 

Bwog’s on-call computer whiz kids Hans E Hyttinen and Anish Bramhandkar explain why this is actually possible, but relatively unlikely:

Hans: Once you access the survey page, a cookie is created on your computer that stores a bit of information, probably indicating whether or not you have completed the survey, so that the next time you visit that URL, it can let you resume your survey (try this by clicking on your link, but closing the page without voting and then reopening the page). I don’t think clearing the cookie would do anything of consequence.

Read more…

Guard the link to your NROTC survey with your life, as that link that was emailed to you this morning is a personalized link. What this strangely inefficient system means is that if someone clicks your link, they can change your vote.

Of course, this is only coming to light after numerous students group leaders have forwarded their survey emails to groupmembers with the intention of encouraging others to vote.  But don’t feel silly! Bwog posted our link earlier today too, before being gently reminded by a member of CCSC that someone had probably already changed our vote several times over.

Old themes came back to haunt us this week.  More of this, a little of that.

About ROTC: New posters arrived. Professors supported ROTC on campus; professors explained their support; professors opposed ROTC on campus. Plus, a forum!

About Flex: Bwog was pumped, we could charge our parents for Hungarian.  Oh no wait, we can charge them for Sip.  Oh but we’ll blow it all at Blue Java and Jay once our meal plan runs out anyway.

About the Rest: More finals-related stress next winter. More paralyzing choices in Gmail. More frostbite and icicles. More water polo victories.

Hot on the heels of an NROTC professor endorsement, a number of faculty members have signed the following statement of opposition to NROTC on campus. In fact, this petition is something of a direct response to the pro-NROTC side’s statements: “In contrast to those who have expressed support for ROTC based on hypothetical conditions, we recognize that any position on ROTC must be grounded in the present. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is official policy and exceptions cannot be negotiated,” it reads. 

Some of Columbia’s biggest names have signed on, including Eric Foner, Dennis Dalton, Victoria de Grazia, and Michael Taussig, among others.

The ad will be published in tomorrow’s Spectator — there’s a screenshot of the PDF, above. There’s also a concurrent online petition that was made available for faculty to sign this morning.

Full text of the statement after the jump.

Read more…