Debate Begins in CEP Over Credit for ROTC

The Committee on Educational Policy yesterday began preliminary discussions of accredation for ROTC courses and faculty status for military science professors.

Although no votes were taken, the CEP agreed to invite student representatives from the HUC and HPC to its next meeting. The HUC initiated the discussion of ROTC on campus last month with a resolution calling for abolition of academic credit and Corporation appointments for faculty in ROTC. The HPC is in the process of issuing a separate audit of the ROTC program.

The CEP will focus its attention on the specific problems of removing academic credit, touching only peripherally on the moral question that the HUC resolution raised.

Yesterday's Meeting

After the meeting yesterday, Dean Ford said that the CEP does not consider the HUC resolution as a fully presented case and that Committee will use it only as a starting point for its own investigation.

The CEP spent most of today's meeting organizing fields of study which include both the objections of Naval ROTC Captain Thomas Moriarty that federal law might force ROTC completely off campus if credit is denied and the example of Boston University where credit has been denied and the units have stayed on.

"It is not a case where anyone has to leap to the defense of ROTC," one CEP member said at the meeting, "rather a question of why a system that has existed so long should be changed so radically."

ROTC is not on the agenda for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences meeting on November 15 so the CEP will not make any recommendations at least until after its next meeting on November 20.