Should colleges lift their ROTC bans? Some school says the military's policy on gays is discriminatory. But President Obama says it's time they welcome ROTC back their campuses.

• Author: Byrd, Austin
• Position: DEBATE - Reserve Officers Training Corps - Barack Obama

YES America's universities have had a tense relationship with the military since the Vietnam War. That's when, in protest, some of the nation's most elite universities kicked the military's Reserve Officers" Training Corps (ROTC) off their campuses--a policy that continues to this day at schools like Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Stanford.

The ROTC program pays all tuition plus a stipend in exchange for four years of active-duty service and four years in the reserves after graduation. ROTC allows students who might not otherwise attend college to do so, and it provides a valuable pipeline of talent for the military--several, thousand newly minted officers each year.

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Most schools cite the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that bars homosexuals from openly serving in the military as the reason for keeping ROTC off campus. But however one feels about that policy, I believe it's more important to give students a chance to fulfill their civic duty by serving in the military. Banning ROTC from campuses discourages our most talented young people from serving in the military at a time when we are fighting two wars and should do the opposite. As a student at Columbia, I had to spend two summers attending the Marine Corps" Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Va., because there was no ROTC on campus. But while there are other places to get officer training, as I did, one must already be a student to take advantage of them--and some people need ROTC's financial, assistance to become a student.

American universities benefit from the rights and privileges of living in a free country in a volatile world. They are therefore obligated to do their part toward its military defense.

Returning ROTC to the campuses of all the nation's most elite schools would benefit students and strengthen the country.

--AUSTIN BYRD Junior at Columbia University

NO When many of the nation's top universities expelled ROTC programs from their campuses in the Late 1960s, the decision...