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Sixty percent of the students polled at Columbia University support a return of the Reserve Officer Training Corps to their campus, according to a report submitted Friday to the University Senate by a special Task Force on Military Engagement. The survey was open chiefly to undergraduate students: in Columbia College, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of General Studies and Barnard College. Graduate students at the School of International and Public Affairs also voted. The survey was administered online over an eight-day stretch, and 2,252 students voted.
In addition, 79 percent of students approved of Columbia "allowing the participation of Columbia students in ROTC, whether on- or off-campus,” which already has been happening. Other statements garnering strong student support included the notion that a ROTC program with Columbia-educated officers would be a positive development (66 percent). Nearly as many, 58 percent, believed military engagement on campus would increase intellectual diversity at Columbia.
The task force, which was composed of five students and four faculty members, also summed up weeks of e-mailed comments it received and provided transcripts to three public meetings on the subject (one of which was the source of controversy). The results of the latest vote, in the wake of the repeal in December of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that barred gay servicemen and women from serving, differed from the last such survey taken at Columbia in 2008. A referendum that year revealed that 49 percent of students favored a return of ROTC to campus.
The fate of the program now rests with a vote of the 108-member University Senate sometime during the next two months.
