Since the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) by the Obama administration earlier this year, many of our nation’s top universities, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, have revisited the possibility of reinstating ROTC on their campuses.  This follows a decades-long ROTC ban initially prompted by anti-military sentiments during the Vietnam War.

Stanford University is considering reinstatement and has engaged in a nine-month-long (and counting) “comprehensive” approach to resolving the matter by learning the history of ROTC and reading letters from students and faculty members who both support and oppose ROTC.

Stanford has barely made any headway after almost a year of exploration by the school’s ad hoc committee on ROTC, because officials are considering arguments such as the fact that transgendered individuals are still excluded from military service

However, the existence of three branches of ROTC at Stanford’s arch-rival from across the bay, UC Berkeley, proves that there are no legitimate reasons to keep ROTC off campus.  Stanford’s “concerns” about transgendered people's rights and anti-war sentiments seem trivial and unfounded when you take into account the fact that Berkeley has not wavered in its support of ROTC on campus.  Specifically, Berkeley has defended the rights of students who wish to participate in ROTC and the right of all branches of the military to recruit on campus.  And ROTC has existed peacefully on campus despite the fact that Berkeley is probably the most “gender-aware” and “antiwar” campus in the country.  Cadets regularly walk among their non-uniformed peers at Berkeley .

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