To the Editor:

The habit of imagining that some policies of the military are good for Columbia while others are not is merely a convention of thinking, not a fact of existence. The same goes for the idea that the military is somehow a privileged institution that has no need to be subject to fundamental values of equality and justice. The way in which Spectator sought to problematize the perceived lack of the military’s presence on this campus, through the article by Josh Hirschland erroneously categorized as “News” and the subsequent editorial, seems to function inconsistently with Spec’s intended role as an objective instrument of campus media, and instead implies a conservative, moralizing mission. You argued that the ROTC should be allowed to establish themselves on this campus “notwithstanding the military’s policies toward homosexuals,” creating the impression that in reality it were as easy and simple to do as you would imply with your faux-journalistic exactitude.

Another thing your editorial seems to suggest is that the World Leaders Forum with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an example of our University “interacting with that which it finds morally wrong,” and that we should apply this model to ROTC, inviting them to stay on campus, while finding their actions reprehensible. Surely this is a fallacious argument, ignoring the differences in the level of scope and involvement between Ahmadinejad and ROTC, and lacks journalistic suspicion on the substantial contradictions that a campus ROTC program connotes. Whether the students agreed with the decision or not, the Ahmadinejad event was premised upon academic discourse and didactic value. Ahmadinejad was not coming to Columbia to set up an officer feeder program for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. military is not banned from campus: we provide ROTC with Web space, we allow the Judge Advocate General’s Corps to recruit law students, and military programs regularly hold induction and graduation ceremonies at campus-owned venues.

Although some might say that the decision of the Columbia trustees to disallow ROTC on campus is predicated upon a fear of a repeat of the 1968 protests, I would prefer to think that it is because they wish to make a conscientious statement about the fundamental values of Columbia and the United States of America—specifically, justice and equality under the law—freedoms which are the very values that the armed forces ostensibly protect. But because of the Solomon Amendment, the trustees are forced to make an uneasy compromise between the military’s demand for data and research on the one hand, while providing student bodies to an increasingly ravenous military-industrial complex on the other, a Hungry-Hungry-Hippos-insatiability evinced by the deployment of the “stop loss” order and the increase in moral waivers for enlistees. These practices, which valiantly attempt to ameliorate the Solomon Amendment, demonstrate a reluctant ambivalence on the trustees’ part to deviate from Columbia’s long-standing non-discrimination policy and newly-instituted “Community Principles”: values and practices the Spectator editorial intoned should be jettisoned faster than you can say “Surge!” (Oh that’s right, I totally went there). In other words, the Solomon Amendment has forced colleges into acting out like recalcitrant children in order to secure both their government funding and their values.

Let us not forget that aside from mere moral argument, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) has pragmatic effects upon the real lives of people. A recent report from the Urban Institute analyzing the 2000 census estimated some 65,000 LGBT service-people. One of these was Allen Schindler, murdered by a fellow soldier for his sexuality in 1992. Another was Barry Winchell, beaten to death in 1999 by fellow soldiers who assumed he was gay because he dated a transgender woman. The founder of Columbia Queer Alliance, Stephen Donaldson, eventually became an Navy veteran who mounted the first public campaign against his dishonorable discharge (and was eventually upgraded to an honorable discharge by President Jimmy Carter). The story of the military involves the story of LGBT folk, whether openly accepted or not. It is significant that other Western countries and NATO do allow LGBT people in the military, while the U.S. continues to uphold a policy of DADT that is premised upon a hatred of and aversion to LGBT people and represents an abdication of constitutional principles. Ultimately, it is possible that Columbia students would welcome the ROTC on this campus if it meant accommodating instead of scapegoating or selling out a particular group of students.

Aries Dela Cruz

The author is a student in the school of General Studies and the vice president of the Columbia Queer Alliance.