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Serving in Naval ROTC enriched my Cornell experience and helped me throughout life in learning to work with, and listen to, people from different perspectives. I am thankful for the opportunities during my years in NROTC, which took me out of my comfort zone and challenged me academically.

The Navy required classes I would never have taken, ranging from naval architecture and engineering, celestial navigation, calculus, and business management to something brand-new called “computer science.”

In September 1968, I signed up for NROTC in Barton Hall in a new class of 77 midshipmen out of about 300 total in the unit.  

Over our four years, we were given increasing leadership roles and spent about six weeks each summer gaining experience on fleet ships, at a naval air station, and with the Marines.

During these summer “cruises,” we worked with NROTC midshipmen from the Naval Academy and other institutions like Prairie View A&M (home to the first Black NROTC), the University of Texas, the Citadel, and Duke, which broadened our views about the country.

Cornell was founded as a Morrill Land Grant school, and Ezra Cornell was a strong proponent of military training—which complemented his vision, “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”

The University has a distinguished history of training well-rounded officers, commissioning over 5,000 (more than any other institution in the U.S.) during World War I and over 15,000 through the Navy V-12 program in World War II.

Today Cornell remains the only Ivy League school which still has all three ROTC services on campus.

But during my undergraduate years, hatred of the draft, President Nixon, and the Vietnam War increased, and protests escalated on campus.

Some felt emboldened to purge the University of any signs of the military by protesting contracting and recruiting—even burning and defacing the shrine in the World War I memorial at the base of Libe Slope.

Others resorted to aggressive acts to remove ROTC from Cornell by vandalizing property and breaking up drills in Barton Hall.

Many students directed their wrath toward ROTC members because we wore the uniform of the United States—one day, some jerk went out of his way to knock the white hat off my head—and by 1972, only 17 of the original 77 in my class were commissioned.

I worked my way through Cornell in a cafeteria, in the business school library, and as a dorm counselor. In spring 1969, we were briefed that several midshipmen had left the program due to various pressures, and scholarships were available.

I interviewed and was excited to be awarded a full-tuition scholarship for a regular Navy commission, so I took the opportunity to transfer from CALS and applied to Arts & Sciences to be a history major.

I showed up for my interview with an assistant dean, who had a gray brush-cut and was leaning back in his chair smoking a cigarette. When I walked in with my short hair—which really stood out on the Arts Quad and in classes—he was shocked, almost falling out of his chair as he exclaimed, “Are you in ROTC?” I said, “Yes sir, I am.” He said, “Damn it, I was in one of General Patton’s first tanks to cross the Rhine, and I don’t think we should have stopped until we got to Moscow—do you?”

I said, “We should have kept going to Moscow”—and was admitted to Arts & Sciences.
There were several of us ROTC people in Arts, and we stood out; it was easier being on the Engineering or Ag quads. But being an Artsie during those years changed my perspective. Along with my core history courses, I took chances and enrolled in Russian language, Chinese foreign policy, comparative revolutions, and art history—which broadened my Cornell experience and helped me later in life.

I eventually went on to work with many foreign representatives—including the Russians in the 1990s, and again in the 2010s on U.S.-Russia confidence-building efforts—and spent too many years on various staffs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Commerce and Transportation departments.

During the 1969–70 academic year, Cornell had come within a handful of votes of throwing ROTC off campus.

Over the past decades, many Ivy alumni have worked hard to get ROTC back on their campuses. Cornell managed to survive those years thanks to cool heads like President Dale Corson and others, who took personal risks and showed great leadership in standing up against the prevailing winds.

We need to remember the University’s long history of training well-rounded officers, and that Cornell ROTC has never fully recovered from those protest years 55 years ago.
To honor the legacy of our founder and to support the all-volunteer military, we should work to help Cornell’s ROTC programs provide more leaders to serve during these increasingly challenging and dangerous times for America.