Sometimes there are debates on campus that bring up a lot of controversy and hard feelings without actionally having much substance. One of them most recently at Plattsburgh State was the proposal to create a campus ROTC (Reserve Officer Traing Corporation or ROT-C) program.

ROTC gets a bad name, as it the insitution that trains about half our military leaders in any one year. Anything military gets tarred with the same brush that tars the warmongers that are running our country in Washington. Anything military automatically gets associated with ill-concieved wars, like the one in Iraq, even if the connection is relatively remote.

ROTC essentially is a leadership program that consists of a series of four classes that the first two are open to all students. These courses teach mostly leadership skills, somewhat in a military perspective, but are not about killing or destruction. They are optional courses, and they would exclusively be taught by ROTC instructors.

We want men of integrity and a diverse background in our military. We also want those who are brave enough, and feel that ROTC is the way to make a career to be able to have access to such a program in the Plattsburgh-area. Right now those people have to go 100 miles to SUNY Potsdam or 30 miles plus a ferry ride to University at Vermont (UVM).

This program proposed on campus is going to very small. They expect no more the 60 students, probably closer to 30 or less who would be taking ROTC classes along with a regular course load. They would be not be in uniform, and would be totally annonymous to other students. You wouldn't be able to tell a ROTC class from a non-ROTC class in any way. ROTC would have little more then a single relatively undescript office here, their headquarters would remain in UVM.

As a peace advocate who stands out on the corner almost every Monday in Delmar, I was concered about the possibility of ROTC coming to campus. I don't want to see my campus militarized. But with the program just being an adjunct or associate program, and a small one to boot, I doubt anybody but those interested in ROTC will even notice the program exists.

There is too much killing going on these days, and the war in Iraq is disgusting. Yet, the military offers opporunity to a lot of people, particularly in rural areas. Let's have people getting an education and learning about leadership, so that when they go over to a place like Iraq they can honestly tell the civil leaders back home what is going on, and how things really are.