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By Bob Merrick '54 In 1950, the uniform of the day for most men on campus was khakis with a white dress shirt, but I had three additional uniforms to wear. Before going to my part-time job, I often wore my “Minuteman 76” gas station uniform to class. Tuesdays, on my Naval Reserve drill nights, I was transformed into a lowly sailor in bell bottoms with 13 buttons. On Thursdays, I was promoted to an Army cadet in dress uniform. Back then, two years of Reserve Officers’ Training Corps--ROTC--was compulsory for all male students. My problem was that Army ROTC conflicted with my Navy Reserve enlistment, which already had me headed to a commission upon graduation. Naturally, I was pretty miffed when I was told that my Navy affiliation wouldn’t exempt me from Army ROTC. I didn’t really resent ROTC; I just wanted it modified a bit so as to excuse me from it. However, it appears that I may have been instrumental in getting ROTC and/or compulsory ROTC kicked off campuses all over the country. In my junior year as a speech major, debate professor Gerald Marsh pitted each of us against a fellow classmate for our final exam. We had to pick a topic, prepare a written brief, and then stand and deliver our arguments. Interestingly, one of the debate topics Marsh offered was, “Resolved: Compulsory ROTC Should Be Abolished at UC.” Still peeved that I couldn’t drop ROTC, I picked the affirmative position. The classmate who took the negative position was a faculty member who was auditing the course--none other than the professor of Naval ROTC, a commander in the U.S. Navy. At the time, it was generally believed that Cal and many other institutions had compulsory ROTC because they were land grant colleges. Even my opponent, the good Navy commander, thought this so. A little research revealed that the federal Land Grand Act of 1862 simply required the colleges to offer courses in “military tactics.” But in 1868 the state had acted to make ROTC compulsory at UC. Fifty years later, the situation changed again when the state put responsibility for ROTC matters solely into the hands of the UC Board of Regents. Over the years, the Regents had voted several times to keep ROTC compulsory, most recently in 1940. I decided to poll the 1952 Board of Regents to see how they stood. With the help of my good friend, John Kenney ’54, I mailed a one-page survey to all 24 members of the Board, posing several questions, including: “As a regent, do you think UC should abolish compulsory ROTC, and why?” Of the 16 regents who returned my survey, ten answered essentially: “No. We have no jurisdiction in this; as a land grant college we must have compulsory ROTC.” My research had revealed that the Regents could in fact make ROTC totally voluntary. But I hoped they would just introduce some exemptions--in cases like mine, for example. To my surprise, some campus activists of the communist persuasion got wind of my “radical” stance on ROTC and liked it. The activists told me that pushing for the regents to abolish compulsory ROTC could be the first step in getting rid of ROTC altogether--and they urged me to run for rep-at-large on an anti-ROTC platform. This idea was repugnant to me, especially since the Korean War was raging and the military needed our support. I told the communists to take a hike. In 1956, a 2–1 student referendum opposing compulsory ROTC was submitted to the UC Regents. The Board deferred any action for several years but, by early 1965, the ROTC protest movement finally won out. It got ROTC totally abolished at nine major universities, including Stanford, and compulsory ROTC abolished, not just at Cal but at virtually all public colleges in the country. ROTC enrollment in U.S. colleges declined 90 percent. Ironically, that was never my wish. My impression has been that I played a role, albeit unwittingly: My meager opposition to ROTC in a debate for purely selfish reasons sparked forces in motion that eventually sidetracked our nation’s ROTC. Whether or not my impression is accurate, I regret it all happened. I believe that military training on campus has many virtues for the students, the colleges, and the security of our country. That is why, as a retired Naval Reserve officer, I’m heartened to see that today many elective courses in ROTC are offered at our beloved Cal campus. |
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