The ROTC-Campus Relationship
The ROTC-Campus relationship and its causes
Introduction
ROTC has recently returned to many university campuses including the Southern Oregon campus. In a four year time span, the SOU ROTC program has expanded its cadet pool from single digits (Mail Tribune 2009) to just over thirty (SOU 2013). This has potentially created a problem; students all have very different life experiences that may or may not have included interaction with the military. On the SOU campus, my talks with many students has led me to believe that some students not only feel separate from cadets (students within the ROTC program), but possess a wide range of views about ROTC influenced largely by a misunderstanding of the program. It is a tradition for ROTC cadets to wear their uniform on Thursdays but in a liberal arts college where conflicting views are encouraged, the presence of military uniforms might spark discontent and unrest. These negative views about the military seem to reflect onto the cadets regardless of their individual contribution to this end. This paper aims to find the reasons non-ROTC students may dislike the presence of the ROTC program, feel separate from cadets, and how the military uniform might be a key contributor to the irritation.
Body
Separations: There is evidence to show some clear separations between cadets and students. Besides the obvious differences in career pathways, cadets have been found to have considerably more conservative leanings than the general student body. A study conducted by Ted Goertzel and Acco Hengst (1971) found that although cadets and students did not vary greatly on background characteristics, the “military mind” was a main differentiation between them. The military mind, as Goertzel and Hengst put it, were opinions favoring “personality authoritarianism, misanthropy [general hatred of human nature], punitiveness, intolerance, aggressive nationalism, political-economic conservatism, belief in imperialism, and preference for
Introduction
ROTC has recently returned to many university campuses including the Southern Oregon campus. In a four year time span, the SOU ROTC program has expanded its cadet pool from single digits (Mail Tribune 2009) to just over thirty (SOU 2013). This has potentially created a problem; students all have very different life experiences that may or may not have included interaction with the military. On the SOU campus, my talks with many students has led me to believe that some students not only feel separate from cadets (students within the ROTC program), but possess a wide range of views about ROTC influenced largely by a misunderstanding of the program. It is a tradition for ROTC cadets to wear their uniform on Thursdays but in a liberal arts college where conflicting views are encouraged, the presence of military uniforms might spark discontent and unrest. These negative views about the military seem to reflect onto the cadets regardless of their individual contribution to this end. This paper aims to find the reasons non-ROTC students may dislike the presence of the ROTC program, feel separate from cadets, and how the military uniform might be a key contributor to the irritation.
Body
Separations: There is evidence to show some clear separations between cadets and students. Besides the obvious differences in career pathways, cadets have been found to have considerably more conservative leanings than the general student body. A study conducted by Ted Goertzel and Acco Hengst (1971) found that although cadets and students did not vary greatly on background characteristics, the “military mind” was a main differentiation between them. The military mind, as Goertzel and Hengst put it, were opinions favoring “personality authoritarianism, misanthropy [general hatred of human nature], punitiveness, intolerance, aggressive nationalism, political-economic conservatism, belief in imperialism, and preference for
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