“Current federal policy of excluding known lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals from admission to ROTC or of discharging them from service is inconsistent with Harvard’s values as stated in its policy on discrimination.”

Harvard’s official policy regarding the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program states that the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) doctrine of excluding openly LGBT servicemen conflicts with the university’s discrimination policy, forcing Harvard to prohibit ROTC from active participation on campus. Last year, the Harvard Republican Club sponsored a campus-wide survey in which 62% of the student body supported reversing the ROTC policy; the survey sparked massive protest within the QSA, many of whom claimed that ROTC programs were not only non-inclusive of the openly queer, but detrimental to queer rights movements on campus. However, exiling ROTC from the Harvard campus is more punitive and deleterious to the queer community than the DADT policy, denying queer and queer-friendly students a critical on-campus scholarship and career program.