Change in Action: Abolishing ROTC at Dartmouth

What led to the abolition of ROTC at Dartmouth?

Clipping from The Dartmouth,  faculty vote setting setting 1973 as final ROTC termination date

The above article clipping represents an integral time during at the period of Dartmouth’s decision to abolish ROTC from its campus. The decision to abolish ROTC at Dartmouth came in a sequence of storied events, especially in 1969, the talks reaching somewhat of a climactic point at the seizure of Parkhurst Hall on May 6, 1969. What you might notice about the above photo is that this faculty decision is published on May 6, 1969, the day that 56 student protestors were arrested for occupying and forcibly removing faculty from Parkhurst Hall.

Leading Up to the Seizure and Occupation of Parkhurst Hall

In the months leading up to Parkhurst in May of 1969, nearly every single daily issue of The Dartmouth held a front-page story concerning protests, referendums, or faculty decisions regarding the presence of ROTC on Dartmouth’s campus going forward. Of course, the discussion had been building for years, especially in the previous year of 1968 where protests began gaining popularity and general public sentiments began to turn skeptical of American involvement in Vietnam. Dartmouth demonstrators organized peaceful sit-ins and protests became more and more frequent, each with a clearer message of demanding that ROTC be removed from campus as soon as possible. In the April 30, 1969 issue of The Dartmouth, the front page top headline read “Demonstrators Reiteratre Stand; Demand Dartmouth Oust ROTC Completely: May 12 Deadline”.

The next day, it was reported that students urged faculty to air their discussion on ROTC in the form of a petition with over 900 signatures. This debate, while not televised, led to the Lyons Proposal, produced by the committee led by Gene M. Lyons, Professor of Government and chairman of the ROTC Affairs Committee. In the report of the Lyons Committee ROTC proposals, Lyons “termed the proposals ‘responsive to what I now consider to be a latent consensus of the faculty and responsive to the general stance that we saw in the student referendum.’” Thus, we can gather that the faculty attention to the issue concerning ROTC on campus was reflective of the student unrest on the issue of ROTC on campus, as shown in votes subsequent to the protests. Important to note, the first point of the proposal declares that “ROTC programs on the campus of Dartmouth College shall be terminated no later than June, 1973, and there shall be no recruitment of students into any ROTC program after June 1, 1969” (Singler 2 May 1969, Page 1).

Patience Runs Out: Anti-War Students Seize Parkhurst 

Clipping from The Dartmouth, showing David Green '71 removing Dean Thaddeus Seymour from Parkhurst Hall

Arriving at the large clippings photo at the top of the page, on May 6, 1969, the day of the seizure of Parkhurst Hall, an amended version of this Lyons Report passed, calling “for the termination of ROTC programs at the College ‘as soon as possible’ with a final deadline of June, 1973” (Zuckerman 6 May 1969, Page 1). In this same report, Professor of Government Henry W. Ehrmann said “We all seem to agree that we do not want to give into irrational pressures,” he said, “but the trouble seems to be that there are no agreed standards of rationality.” Additionally, the report reads that “The initial proposal considered at yesterday’s meeting, presented Friday by History Professor F. David Roberts, would have terminated ROTC as soon as legally possible (September, 1969 for the Air Force and Navy units; June, 1970 for the Army unit).”

 Professor F. David Roberts stating that the earliest legally possible date for ROTC termination for the Army unit would be June of 1970 before the Parkhurst takeover, in addition to the fact that the Army ROTC unit was terminated shortly after Parkhurst in 1969, serves to show how much of a catalyst the Parkhurst Occupation was. According to these statements, the event was so monumental that it apparently broke the bounds of legal possibility, as Parkhurst seemed to provide evidence for ROTC termination being a means of safety precation.

Clipping from The Dartmouth, concluding the phase out of ROTC at Dartmouth

John Spritzler, Dartmouth ’68 and a leader of Student for a Democratic Society, spoke about the significance of the Parkhurst occupation in his interview for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project, describing that “I suppose part of the vote was that people who might have felt that if they didn’t, the college couldn’t operate, because it had come to that. But there was a substantial opposition.” To a certain degree, the anti-ROTC protests had become a war of attrition, and to this end, the activists were winning against the College administration. The administration cracked down on those who participated in the Parkhurst occupation, sending 56 students to jail, a real life punishment instead of a slap on the wrist.

The Faculty Concede: ROTC is Abolished at Dartmouth

Nonetheless, in the end we see the abolition of Army ROTC shortly thereafter in 1969. In a June 9, 1973 article of The Dartmouth reporting the “Last NROTC Officers Commissioned,” we see that, “the Army left almost immediately after the decision [in 1969], and the Air Force had removed its unit by June of 1971. These two branches of service were able to move quickly since they had very few students here on scholarship, and those that were here could be relocated in other schools” (Maresca 9 July 1973, Page 2). While Parkhurst was definitely the most severe of the protests, resulting in the harshest punishment, the event paid dividends in the concrete legislative action that it passed shortly after it took place. When talking about the results of Parkhurst, John Spritzler said, “The main thing was, it was a huge victory. ROTC was abolished for ten years. So it was huge victory, and it was sort of a celebratory kind of realization of that. There were some hardships of students in jail and, you know, having to pay lawyer costs and all that kind of stuff, but basically it was a victory.” For the short term, until ROTC was revived, Parkhurst and its consequential effects served as the catalyst for nearly immediate change in abolishing ROTC.