GUEST COLUMN: Talkin in circles

Stanley Chodorow explains theStanley Chodorow explains therecent ROTC negotiations - andStanley Chodorow explains therecent ROTC negotiations - andwhy he's decided to stop talking. Stanley Chodorow explains therecent ROTC negotiations - andwhy he's decided to stop talking. As Communications Professor Larry Gross said two months ago, there comes a time when you have to conclude that the negotiations on the University's Reserve Officers' Training Corps program have gone as far as they can. My last conversation with the Army was on Monday, April 22, 1996 -- and it confirmed my conclusion that we are now at this point. The first option was to create an "arms-length" arrangement, eliminating modest levels of University support but permitting ROTC to remain on campus as an "association." The second was to seek consortial arrangements that would move ROTC to another university to which Penn ROTC students could commute. The third was to seek to establish a regional consortium located at a non-campus site in greater Philadelphia. The committee recommended that if none of these options was possible, we should terminate our relationship with ROTC. At its September 1994 meeting, University Council voted to accept the recommendations of the committee -- except for termination. Since fall 1994, I have been working to negotiate a new relationship between Penn and the ROTC units. This negotiation has been aimed at altering our existing contracts with Army and Naval ROTC. I started by discussing this issue with other local provosts, to ascertain their feelings about consortial arrangements. St. Joseph's and Villanova universities were interested in maintaining the status quo. Temple and Drexel universities were interested in "hosting" Army ROTC. At the same time, I began discussions with the military about the terms of our contracts. Throughout these discussions, I started with the local commanders and moved on to regional commanders and then to national commanders, seeking to get answers at the higher levels that I was not getting at the lower levels. With the Navy, I wrote to Vice Admiral Timothy Wright, director of Naval Training, and ultimately met directly with the Secretary of the Navy, John Dalton. We moved quickly up the chain of command, but got stuck until Dalton himself got involved. He made it crystal clear -- in private and later in public -- that the Navy has no interest in changing its relationship with Penn. With the Army, it has been much more complicated. I spoke on numerous occasions to the local commander, Lt. Col. Ted Majer. I made contact with Maj. Gen. James Lyle at the headquarters of the U.S. Army Cadet Command. I also had discussions with Lt. Gen. Theodore Stroup in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel at the headquarters of the Department of the Army. Just when I thought we were getting somewhere, the entire command structure was changed -- it is the Army, after all -- and we had to start over again. In the fall and winter of this year, I had conversations with the new regional commander of the Liberty Brigade, Col. Lonnie Dale Vona. Col. Vona and Lt. Col. Majer proposed to create a consortium for Penn's and Drexel's Army ROTC at Drexel. However, at the next level of command this proposal was rejected by the new regional commander, who said he did not want to close the Penn program. In the meantime, I wrote letters to and spoke with Edwin Dorn, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. David Morse, the University's associate vice president for Policy Planning, spoke with Bill Carr in the federal Office of Accession Policy. These discussions and letters went nowhere. Although the Department of Defense offices were willing to listen and think about the issues, they ultimately said "No go." In February, Congress passed the Pombo Amendment, stating that an institution that unilaterally alters an agreement with ROTC and has an anti-ROTC policy will lose its DoD funding. We studied the law very carefully and became convinced that it did not apply to us. We are not acting unilaterally; we have been engaged in a negotiation. The passage of the amendment is, however, a further sign of the government's intractability on the issue. It's easy to see why I have concluded there is nothing to be gained through further negotiation. We have talked to everyone all the way to the top, and we have now gotten definitive answers. In the meantime, we have continued to be very active -- as the administration has been since 1991 -- in urging a change of the policy prohibiting out gay and lesbians from serving in the military. I have written to the American Council on Education, asking them to file an amicus brief in one or more of the many suits now challenging the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. We are urging the ACE to take a position against the policy as inconsistent with the non-discrimination policies on most American campuses. Penn is committed to doing what it can to change this unjustified and unjustifiable policy. In addition, we are very concerned about the fate of individual students who lose their scholarships because of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. We have undertaken to guarantee that such students will be able to continue at Penn. The actions of ROTC should not affect the ability of students in the program to continue in our program, and we intend to make certain this is the case. I will also ask the school faculties to review the granting of credit for ROTC courses and review the employee benefits provided to ROTC staff members.