Columbia’s Refusal to Give Benefits to ROTC Participants Limits Students’ Options
To the Editor:
Hannah Johns’ article in the Sept. 15 issue of the Spectator, entitled “Obama Flip-Flops on ROTC,” mischaracterizes some of the details surrounding the ROTC on campus debate. To be clear—no one is calling for an ROTC detachment on campus. Fordham has an excellent program that serves many universities in the greater New York area, including Columbia, New York University, and Marist, to name a few. There is no need or desire for another detachment exclusively for Columbia students. The debate, rather, revolves around Columbia’s implicit discouragement of ROTC membership. Columbia students receive no credit for their requisite military science classes, which run for four hours every week. Nor is the rigorous physical training class—which students attend three to five times per week, for one hour per day, at 0700—counted toward the physical education portion of the core curriculum. Columbia-sanctioned sports, needless to say, do fulfill this requirement. And while Fordham provides free housing for those cadets receiving ROTC scholarships, Columbia offers no equivalent. Cadets granted scholarships to attend Columbia must still pay the full cost of housing out of pocket or obtain aid from another source.
Treating ROTC cadets as second-class citizens has effectively diminished their presence on campus. Out of the 5,400 undergraduate students at Columbia, only four are Army ROTC cadets. Two of these are transfer students who were enrolled in ROTC at their former schools. The remaining two are General Studies students who had served in the Army prior to matriculating. A single graduate student is also enrolled in the program. Conspicuously absent from this list are any students who began their careers at Columbia. The University has averted its eyes to the possibility of serving as an officer, hoping this action will somehow promote change in military policy. In reality, it has only succeeded in limiting the options of its students and reducing the number of Columbia-educated leaders who serve in the armed forces.
Jan-Michael Rives
CC ’09
Limiting Bands’ Presence at Homecoming Detracts From Otherwise Successful Event
To the Editor:
As a Princeton fan, Columbia spouse, and Inwood neighbor, I greatly enjoyed the thrilling football game versus Princeton on Saturday. The event was wonderfully run, and I think all in attendance had a good time. My congratulations to the facility and Homecoming managers.
The only note of concern was the use of taped music on the stadium scoreboard. I remember well the 1990s Columbia bands, which were very small in number and weak in musical ability. However, there was no need to use taped recordings of “Roar Lions Roar” when the Columbia University Marching Band had so many members in attendance at the game—over 50, it seemed—who were easily capable of providing a live soundtrack. Furthermore, I have been to over 50 Ivy League football contests and never seen a school cancel one of the band’s halftime shows purely for reasons of time management. Special events to recognize athletes, alumni, etc. at halftime are nothing new, but telling the Princeton band it could not perform—and giving the Columbia band only a couple of minutes—is very unusual, and a blow to the college atmosphere. Surely there was a way to shorten the ceremony, or perhaps not put the kickers back onto the field with 5.5 minutes remaining in the halftime. I and the many other Princeton fans were rather disappointed at this, the only flaw in Columbia’s otherwise gracious hosting of the game.
David Thom
New York, NY
Advantages Offered by SAT Cancelled Out by Problems
To the Editor:
In “In Defense of the SAT,” Amin Ghadimi claims that the “SAT remains an indispensable part of the college admission process” in part because of it’s ability to “check the rampant grade inflation.” While I agree that it’s important for colleges to be able to put applicants’ GPAs in perspective, SAT’s are not the most effective gauge of student performance. For instance, some schools submit information to colleges that shows the breakdown of student grades in each subject for the applicant’s year. This allows the college to differentiate between a school where 50 percent of the student body receives A grades, and one where 5 percent does. Such information is much more useful to colleges than how a student performed on a standardized test.
Much more importantly, the cost of the SAT makes it an undesirable standard for admission. The SAT reasoning test costs $45, with an additional charge of $9.50 to send results to each school, after the first four. Taking the test multiple times often results in higher grades, so students who can afford to pay double or triple the cost have an additional chance to raise their score, whereas students from lower socioeconomic classes are unable to do so. Additionally, SAT prep books cost $70, and a Kaplan course, which guarantees higher test scores, costs over $1,000. In essence, the SAT allows students to pay for higher grades, making it useless in determining college admission.
Cameron McClure, CC ’11
Have something to say about one of our articles? Write a letter to the editor. Letters should be between 200 and 300 words and must reference the specific article to which they are responding. Please send your
letters to opinion@columbiaspectator.com.