By a wide margin the Faculty Senate at Stanford University approved a proposal that would return the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program to the Palo Alto campus after a 40-year absence.
The 28-9 vote, with three abstentions, came on Thursday, April 28, after a yearlong review and university-wide debate. A week earlier an ad hoc committee had recommended that university President John Hennessy invite ROTC back to campus.
The move at Stanford follows similar action at Harvard and Columbia, where ROTC had been banned since the Vietnam War era. But with the imminent repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't tell," the military's ban on openly gay service – which conflicts with the private universities' sexual orientation non-discrimination policies – school officials there began rethinking the ROTC ban.
And while repealing DADT would enable openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual men and women to serve in the military, transgender service is still barred, a discriminatory restriction that is irksome for both opponents and proponents of ROTC's return.
As Stanford's provost, John Etchemendy, said in a statement, "Our support for re-establishing the ROTC program should not be misconstrued. We understand the concerns about the military's continuing discrimination against transgender people, and we share those concerns."
But transgender rights advocates voiced frustration with the Faculty Senate vote, as well as the statement.
"I'm extremely disappointed by the vote of the Faculty Senate," said San Diego-based activist Autumn Sandeen, a disabled, transgender Gulf War veteran and blogger.
"That the vote was so lopsided in favor of a return of an ROTC program to campus sent a message to every transgender veteran and every transgender student that transgender people are not considered as human as members of other minority groups in California," she added.
Sandeen traveled to Stanford to protest the return of ROTC. "Particularly frustrating," she said, was the provost's remark. "It is an intentionally toothless comment that will have no bearing on the future actions of the school."
Student leadership at Stanford shared her disappointment.
"We feel like a lot of universities, including Stanford, set a precedent with not brining back ROTC while 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' was in place," said sophomore Alok Vaid-Menon, who serves as president of Stanford Students for Queer Liberation and is from College Station, Texas. "Even though transgender people still can't serve, that doesn't seem to be legitimate enough a reason for [school officials] not to bring [ROTC] back."
Michael Cruz, a junior who is president of the Associated Students of Stanford University, also opposed ROTC's return and urged the Faculty Senate to vote no during its two hours of deliberations.
"As student body president, I felt my duty was to represent a broad spectrum of views, but also to make sure the rights of every single Stanford student were protected with the official return of a program," Cruz, who is from Fresno, said. "The official return of ROTC would discriminate against students who identify as transgender."
And yet ROTC's return has its supporters. In this spring's student elections, for example, 44 percent of voters supported bringing back ROTC while 17 percent opposed it, with 39 percent abstaining on an advisory referendum question.
Out retired Navy Commander Zoe Dunning, a 1993 alumnus of Stanford's graduate business school, said she supports the Faculty Senate's decision.
"I don't do that from the standpoint of leaving our transgender brothers and sisters behind," Dunning said, "but from the perspective of not being a big fan of ROTC's ban in the first place."
As she explained, "It feels like the more progressive universities have banned ROTC. The military officer corps then comes exclusively from conservative campuses." Much better, Dunning said, "To have a military corps with a liberal education."
Leadership from national DADT repeal advocacy groups said they, too, were supportive of the developments at Stanford.
"Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is very pleased that Stanford and other leading universities are welcoming ROTC back on campus," said Army veteran Aubrey Sarvis, SLDN's executive director.
Still, "We look forward to the day when transgender military service happens. In the interim, we will be working with our allies to make such service a reality," he added.
Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United, said he was "glad" that Stanford and other elite schools are welcoming ROTC programs back to campuses.
"Perhaps if the armed forces had not lost several generations of Ivy League-educated officers as a result of the ROTC ban, we would have had a more liberal senior officer corps by now and would have been able to get rid of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' many years ago," he said.