Students, Faculty At Yale Review Status of ROTC

Yale University may abolish academic credit for ROTC courses within the next few weeks.

The move has been expected since February 1, when the Courses of Study Committee--Yale's ruling body on academic affairs--voted to reduce the total requirements for a Yale degree from 20 to 18 full courses. At that time, according to reliable sources, the sense of the Committee was that the reduced course load would mean the end of academic credit for courses not actually administered by Yale.

At present, Yale students can earn 7.5 per cent of their total degree requirements through Army ROTC, or 20 per cent through the Navy program. There is no Air Force unit at Yale.

The Committee was expected to vote on ROTC credit at a meeting yesterday afternoon, but agreed to defer its decision to early April, pending a review of Yale's ROTC contracts.

Two days before yesterday's meeting, the Yale Student Advisory Board--the equivalent of the Harvard Policy Committee and the Harvard Undergraduate Council--urged the University to terminate the present ROTC contracts with the Army and Navy before the start of the 1968-69 academic year. The SAB resolution which was adopted by a 16-2 vote, specifically recommended that ROTC courses not be given academic credit, that they not be listed in the Yale catalog, and that the ROTC units be deprived of their free facilities on the Yale campus.

On Wednesday, the Yale Daily News gave its support to the SAB position with an editorial calling for the abolition of ROTC credit. Alan Boles '69, editor of the News, said last night that student opinion at Yale appeared to support the SAB resolution. He added that there had been "surprisingly little" reactions to the SAB and News initiatives from Yale ROTC cadets.