The Young America’s Foundation has put out this press release:
Debating January 15, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all went on record saying they will vigorously enforce the Solomon amendment—the federal mandate to cut-off taxpayer funding for universities hostile to military recruiters and the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
We couldn’t agree more! Young Americans who wish to serve their country should readily be able to volunteer, without having to surmount huge institutional obstacles, such driving more than 70 miles from Yale to UCONN just to participate in ROTC.
Six of the top ten schools on U.S. News’ 2008 college rankings do not host ROTC programs on campus. However, together they received over $4.6 billion from the U.S. Treasury in 2005-6, the latest year for which their financial reports are available. Not including federal student financial aid at each institution, governmental grants and contracts totaled over:
$517 million for Harvard
$430 million for Yale
$935 million for Stanford
$1.832 billion for Caltech
$642 million for Columbia
$317 million for the University of Chicago
Since Vietnam, these schools have constantly sought ways to say “NO!” to the military. Taxpayers and the military deserve better; schools who enjoy such generous subsidies should directly contribute to our nation’s defenses. For all they’ve been given, these schools should be looking for ways to say “YES!” and “Thank You!” to our nation.
Each of those schools has a history of official opposition to both military recruiting and ROTC programs on campus.
Here’s the video of each candidate saying they’ll fully and “vigorously” support the Solomon Act.
You’ll have to wade through several minutes of demagoguery about poor veterans living in cardboard boxes under bridges before you get to their respective answers, but it’s all there and it sounds like campaign promises to me. No way any of these three alienate their liberal base by making college liberals have to be tolerant of icky soldier types.
On a side note, with endowments that run into the tens of billions, why in the world are we giving them hundreds of millions of our tax dollars?