"THROW THE RASCALS OUT"

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I was rather disturbed to read in the CRIMSON recently that the ROTC units at Harvard expect an enrollment of 1,300 students next year.

The mere size of this anticipated enrollment in a military organization on a college campus is shocking enough, for there is no proper place in a university such as Harvard for a military organization of any description, regardless of its size, and regardless of the national and international situation. What is appalling, however, is that University authorities, such as President Conant himself, can, apparently calmly, state that forty percent of the freshman class is enrolled in the ROTC, and that we must expect a majority of freshmen to be enrolled in these units as part of their undergraduate work. And that they state, further, not that we must seek some method of reducing this enrollment, but that we must attempt to make adjustments to it...

An ROTC--a military unit of any kind--is an abomination on any college campus. For a college to tolerate the existence of such a unit during peacetime, when very few students are interested in it, and most look with contempt upon it (and correctly so), is more of a concession than should properly be allowed. To permit it to take a position of as great importance in college as it has at present at Harvard is completely out of keeping with all that the University stands for and aims toward. Harvard is not, and should not be educating its students to spend with the military the two to eight years following their graduation.

We see stated that, apparently, the only limitation upon the size of these units is that imposed upon the military. Why, if Harvard will not altogether abolish these courses, as it ought to do, does it not impose its own restrictions upon the number of students enrolling in them? And why does the University see fit to grant any credit whatever for these courses? They certainly contribute not one whit to that education with which Harvard seeks to equip its students; on the contrary, they seriously detract from that education by occupying the students' time with senseless military trivia, and by attempting to inculcate them with values which are completely antiethical to those which Harvard tries to impart.

It is time, I think, for a re-examination of the place of the military at Harvard. If there are any places in the world today which should remain aloof from the current militaristic trend, these places are our universities. Rather than permit the ROTC units to expand, let us, instead, throw them out of the University entirely. Franklin E. Kameny, GSAS