MILITARY ON CAMPUS

Kathy the cake-eater links to a piece in today's Opinion Journal on efforts to bring ROTC back to Columbia University. The current faculty excuse is the military's ban on alternative lifestyles. Law schools underwent similar convulsions in 1991 when the American Association of Law Schools, one of the two accreditation bodies (the other is the American Bar Association) threatened to pull accreditation from any school which permitted employers on-campus who discriminate against gays. The public law schools in Virginia (UVA, William and Mary, and George Mason) were wringing their hands about how they had no choice but to ban JAG recruiters when they were reminded by the legislature at budget time that a Vietnam-era state law guarantees access to military recruiters. The private schools, mainly Richmond and Washington and Lee, fell in line when alumni threatened to cut the schools off. Nothing will focus the attention of any university president like the sound of a checkbook closing.