Members are named to ROTC committee

Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson has appointed the Committee to Review the ROTC Arrangement at Penn, which will likely determine the fate of the Reserve Officers Training Corps. One graduate student and one undergraduate student are among the nine people Lazerson appointed to the committee, which has a charge of presenting "a range of possible arrangements with the ROTC." The committee is supposed to report by April 1994. "The real issue is, are there ways in which one can find some compatibility between quite a range of differing opinions," Lazerson said last night. "Can you actually develop a model for arrangements with organizations like ROTC whose?policies you're not entirely happy with but who play a productive role on campus?" ROTC's "policies" include President Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which essentially instructs gays in the military not to admit to their sexual orientation. But the "productive role on campus" is that ROTC provides scholarships to many University students and contributes to the diversity of the student body. Stephen Heyman, a University Trustee serving on the ROTC Committee, said while he supports the right of gays to be in the military, he also supports what ROTC does for the University campus. "I think gays should be in the military," he said last night. "The fact that our Penn gay community is protesting this is fine to get something done on a national level, but we cannot overlook the fact that we have so many students who are going to ROTC that are being funded by the three military units." Heyman added that there are probably gay and lesbian students who are benefactors of the scholarships. The debate began in the spring of 1990, when members of the University community pointed out the discrepancy between the University's Non-Discrimination Policy and the Pentagon's policy. In May 1990, University Council passed a resolution demanding that ROTC be kicked off campus by June 1993. The resolution was also approved by the Faculty Senate Committee on Conduct. But last November, former President Sheldon Hackney decided to take a "wait and see" attitude on the issue, hoping Clinton would drop the national ban on homosexuals in the military. Clinton instead proposed his "don't ask, don't tell" policy. College senior Jodi Bromberg said last night that although the ROTC Committee has finally been appointed, it is a "sit and wait" situation now. "I would say [the appointment of the Committee] is a step in the right direction," said Bromberg, a member of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Alliance. "Obviously I'm disappointed that it took two months into school to get the committee finalized, but I'm pleased with the undergraduate and graduate representatives that were chosen." Bromberg, who is also a Daily Pennsylvanian columnist, said a practical solution would be to phase out ROTC over five years, so that students currently receiving scholarships would continue to be funded. Lazerson said although the U.S. government is still debating the constitutionality of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, it is still important for the ROTC Committee to make a definitive decision. "The committee is set up because we don't know what the outcomes are going to be, but we need to make our own decisions," he said. "When federal policy is uncertain you've got to decide what's best for your own campus."