UCLA must end alignment with ROTC discrimination
By David Mixner
The issue is clear. ROTC, under the military’s new "don’t ask,
don’t tell" guidelines, will not allow openly gay and lesbian
students to participate in its program. If a student is discovered
to be homosexual, he or she could be investigated, dismissed from
the program and forced to pay back any scholarship money
received.
It is unrealistic to expect the Pentagon to change its policy
any time in the near future. But changing UCLA’s relationship with
ROTC is another story.
UCLA actively maintains an alliance of discrimination with the
military. Lesbian and gay students are refused access to
scholarship funds and courses while being denied a chance to
voluntarily serve their country. The university extends academic
recognition to ROTC, gives course credit and uses university Â
and taxpayer  dollars to assist in financing and housing the
program. It continues this support of ROTC even though the
program’s directives are contrary to the university’s own
non-discrimination policy, as well as city and state civil rights
laws.
It is unconscionable for a university, acknowledged to be a
place of tolerance and understanding, to discriminate against any
of its students. There can only be one reason for UCLA to allow
this policy to continue  the fear that it will lose
Department of Defense funding for its other programs. Yet to
finance university programs at the expense of freedom of a select
group of students is simply unacceptable. At what price will the
university sell the rights of its other minority students?
Freedom Project-Los Angeles is not asking UCLA to be the first
institution of higher learning to change the nature of its
relationship with ROTC. Many universities and colleges in
California and across the country are no longer giving course
credit for ROTC nor do they allow its use of campus facilities.
Some have severed their ties with ROTC completely. These
universities have chosen a road of moral strength, setting an
example for their students by teaching them that intolerance of any
kind has no place in our society. We simply ask UCLA to join the
crowd and take a stand.
Maintaining the status quo can only lead to more division and
misunderstanding. We ask the university, Chancellor Young and the
Board of Regents to hear our plea for an end to these exclusionary
policies and eliminate discrimination from the campus without
further delay. The university must sever its ties with ROTC until
such time that ROTC opens its doors and offers its scholarship
money to all students.
This issue will not go away. Either we will work together to
bring about this necessary change or we will mobilize on our own to
force change. The choice belongs to the university and its
chancellor.
Mixner is the founder of Freedom Project-Los Angeles, an
organization that works to end ROTC discrimination at UCLA.