If you want to be a doctor, a lawyer or a tycoon, conventional wisdom says that getting into one of America's top schools -- Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Yale -- will put you on the right path. But if you have aspirations for the kind of leadership that puts you on the front lines of the Global War on Terror, you're reminded again this week that there's no room at the inn.
The one good thing about presidential elections -- even the 2008 epoch -- is that between the rhetoric, insipid spins and restrictive debates, issues that matter always seem to find their way to the surface.
Yesterday, presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), told crowds in Pensacola, Fla., and Annapolis, Md., that ROTC programs should be given space on all U.S. campuses. "That they are frequently denied that privilege is disgraceful," he said.
Hooah. Say it again, Senator.
The ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) is the principle provider of America's commissioned officer corps. That is, the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps lieutenants, and Navy ensigns that lead and train our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors. A sizeable amount of our military leadership in the last century has come from the ROTC ranks.
As anyone who has received one of the select scholarships to train intensely for the four years of their undergraduate education (as I did before an injury turned a military career into a writing one), it's no easy task receiving or keeping the highly competitive scholarship. Top student? Check. Top young leader? Check. Top athlete? Check. Mature, tough minded, calm, cool? Check. These are impressive, selfless people. In my case, I have yet to be surrounded again by a more honorable group of men and women.
For Americans who value the service our young military leaders provide and the commitment to sacrifice they make at such a young age, seeing some of the so-called "top" schools inadvertently exclude students who they would otherwise accept simply because that student wants to serve the country in a leadership position is troubling. It's a stomach tightening troubling.
It's an exclusion borne of the draft card-burning Vietnam War era. And as those aging protestors have become middle-aged professors and administrators of the Academy, the idea of having books blend with stars, bars, and troop movement tactics is just too much to take. It doesn't blend well with their view of intelligentsia.
Under the Solomon Act, a statue governing federal aid to universities, denying the existence of ROTC on campus can disqualify institutions from certain direct federal monies. But some of the "Ivies" get away with it, of course, because they can. Remember, they have a lot of successful doctors, lawyers and tycoons contributing to healthy endowments.
We're at the most dangerous time in America's history. A time that requires (and will continue to require) intelligent, tested, cross-trained leaders to confront challenges in the field -- both foreign and domestic. And somehow, because it offends the sensibilities of enough of America's Brahmin class, our best future leaders have to choose service over membership in the so-called elite school alumni club. For our promising young leaders, it isn't a choice. It's politicized exclusion courtesy of America's navel-gazing, self-selected elite.
