In President Obama's State of the Union Address, he addressed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, saying "no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love." And with that, Obama said it was time for all for college campuses to be open to military recruiters.
But Center for New American Security's Andrew Exum says it's time to take a closer look.
Okay, there is one huge problem with this. It's easy to demonize the Ivy League universities for not having more ROTC programs, but the reality is that the U.S. military has been the one most responsible for divesting from ROTC programs in the Northeast United States. It's hardly the fault of Columbia University that the U.S. Army has only two ROTC programs to serve the eight million residents and 605,000 university students of New York City. And it's not the University of Chicago's fault that the entire city of Chicago has one ROTC program while the state of Alabama has ten. The U.S. military made a conscious decision to cut costs by recruiting and training officers where people were more likely to volunteer. That makes sense given an ROTC budget that has been slashed since the end of the Cold War. But it also means that the U.S. Army and its sister services are just as responsible for this divide between the so-called "elite" living within the Acela Corridor and the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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