The Faculty Senate at Stanford University voted to allow the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) back on campus on Thursday.  In a reasonable world, this would be paired with an apology for discriminating against military officers.  However, even when Stanford does something good, it has to be dragged along kicking and screaming.  

Students at Stanford University will finally have their day to weigh in on the return of ROTC to their campus.

The Reserve Officer Training Corps is used for teaching military science courses and recruiting college graduates into leadership positions in our nation's armed forces, but on many elite private university campuses like Stanford, ROTC has been officially non-existent since a rise in hostility to the military among faculty senates during the Vietnam era.

Military recruiting and ROTC programs have faced criticism from groups like the Stanford Students for Queer Liberation, who previously campaigned against the program due to the congressional policy mandated under "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT). With the phasing out of DADT, their new objection is that ROTC discriminates against transgendered students.

This was the basis for their constitutional challenge to the upcoming referendum, claming that voting on the return of ROTC would violate Stanford's non-discrimination policy. The Associated Students of Stanford University dismissed this challenge, ruling in their constitutional council by a unanimous vote that simply asking students their opinion on ROTC does nothing to touch the question of discrimination at Stanford.

The vote will come in the form of a referendum in April that takes place at the same time as student government elections, with a campaign period beginning when students return from Spring Break March 28th. While the vote will be non-binding (the actual policy is determined in the faculty senate), the tally will nonetheless shine light on student perspectives of ROTC in the 21st century.

Stanford University, located in Silicon Valley just south of the San Francisco Bay, was established in 1891. Today Stanford enrolls more than 15,000 students and employs 1,878 faculty members.

Campus Life

Of the 27 political campus groups, 19 are liberal and eight are conservative.

The liberal campus groups are the Queer/Straight Alliance, The Stanford Democrats, MEChA, the Stanford Immigrant Rights Project, the Student Labor Action Coalition, Stanford's chapter of the Roosevelt Society, and Stanford Says No to War. Additionally, there are five variations of gay rights groups, two pro-abortion clubs, three green/environmental clubs, and two anti-Israel groups. 

The conservative campus groups are the Stanford Conservative Society, Objectivist Club, the Israel Action Committee, Students for an Open Society, Students for Life, and the Stanford Tea Party, which launched last spring quarter.

Conservative students publish two newspapers: the Stanford Review, which handles investigative stories on campus, and the quarterly Cardinal Principle, which includes opinion articles on national and local issues.

The Stanford Tea Party is on its way to finally establishing a conservative activist organization at a university that has been without one for quite a long time.

They may be starting small, tabling on campus on Tax Day to promote fiscal conservatism and oppose the growth of our national debt, but don't take that to mean they aren't serious about building a movement on their campus.

We can remember the whole idea of a Tea Party sounding insignificant to some observers only one year ago, and now that they can't put a lid on it, they want to brand it as dangerous!

Not every campus reformer will make their mark by hoisting up bold protest signs and chanting loudly in the streets. Some of the most daring and influential political statements in history were written in relatively small print, and student leaders can be part of that tradition by putting pen to paper for their conservative causes.

Whether it's writing on the CampusReform.org blog page for your college or university, the official newspaper on your campus, or an independent conservative student publication, you can help build a movement at your school upon the foundation of your ideas. (Just a couple good examples this week can be found here and here. Check out what they're doing, find your campus sub-site today, and get cracking.)

And another exceptional student who's really taking a stand with his writing is Dakin Sloss, President of the Objectivists of Stanford and the co-writer of the Stanford Review article The Man-Made Myth, which we've reported on previously.

The earth used is flat. That's scientific fact. At least, it used to be.

Politicizing science to fit theory, Earth Science professors at Stanford have tried to quell dissent against the inconclusive orthodoxy of man-made, or "anthropogenic global warming" (AGW).

Two students, Matt Cook and Dakin Sloss, submitted an opinion piece to their  independent school newspaper, The Stanford Review, revealing holes in the popularized theory and raising points of contention.

In response, a teacher's assistant, Cara Brook, in Stanford's Earth Sciences 10 class subjected students to an exam essay which required test takers to refute the two students' assertions, conveying the idea that the AGW theory is now irrefutable fact. The TA who helped package and present the AGW theory as conclusive fact, then wrote her own opinion piece, lauding her department's contributions in the suppression of scientific debate.

As Brook brags, her course of study encourages "changing human behavior" and activism, nothing less than an overt politicization of a scientific theory that would affect every facet of education.