Brown University has reinstated its Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program. This comes years after it dissolved the program due to protests against the Vietnam War.
Fox News reported that Brown University is reinstating its ROTC program after dissolving it nearly half a century ago. Opposition to the programs was dissolved by 2011 with repeal of the policy that banned gays from serving openly in the military.
According to the school's official website, three incoming students will be the first since 1969 to serve their country through Naval and Air Force ROTC programs. First-year students Ben Chiacchia, Luc Langlois and Melia Okura joined University President Christina Paxson, Franklin R. Parker, assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs, and Steven Garland, brigadier general of the Air Force as they formally restored Brown University's participation in the service branches' ROTC programs.
"Without question, what all Brown men and women who have served, are serving and will serve in the United States Armed Forces share is a deep desire to make this country - and by extension, the world - a safer, more secure place for all of us," Paxson said. "As the first Air Force cadets and Navy midshipmen since the Vietnam War begin their studies on College Hill, I could not be prouder of the strengthened ties between Brown University and the Armed Forces."
Brown Navy and Marine Corps ROTC midshipmen will be joining the Naval ROTC unit at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Brown Air Force ROTC cadets will join Detachment 340 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
"This is a great partnership for the Department of the Navy and for Brown University," Parker noted. "The Naval ROTC program will enrich the Brown experience, and the gifted students from Brown's ROTC program will make our military and nation stronger."
Brown University's faculty members voted to limit the role of the program on campus in 1969, in the context of the Vietnam War. It ultimately resulted to the dissolution of the campus-based programs with the Navy, the Marines and the Air Force.
