Cautionary tales from peers for Columbia ROTC

As some Columbia ROTC advocates immediately understood, while the Columbia endorsement of ROTC opened the way for an ROTC program fully based on campus, the Columbia-Navy ROTC agreement announced on April 22, a crosstown agreement for students to participate via SUNY Maritime NROTC in distant Throgs Neck, Bronx, falls short of a Columbia ROTC program fully based on campus.

We are now at the beginning and a critical moment where Columbia NROTC will be designed for the long term. While Columbia and the Navy decide on the actual form of the manifest program at Columbia, Dartmouth AROTC and Princeton AROTC offer Columbia cautionary tales about compromised Ivy ROTC programs that have fallen short of their potential with start-up design flaws. While it's necessary to move from Point A to Point B, also beware of fool's gold and dead-end compromises.

Eric