I've long argued in support of ROTC on Columbia's campus, both to improve campus attitude toward the military, but also to help increase the flow of liberal-minded students back into the armed forces. I'm reading Evan Wright's Generation Kill, about the modern generation of troops going into Iraq, and ran across a quote that sums up my entire argument, out of the mouth of an Ivy Leaguer who didn't have ROTC on campus but still joined the military:

"Despite his cavalier humor, Fick finished at the top of his class in Officer Candidates School and near the top of the Marine Corps' tough Basic Reconnaissance Course. He is also something of a closet idealist. His motivation for joining the Marines is a belief about which he is quietly passionate. "At Dartmouth, there was a sense that an ROTC program, which the school did not have, would militarize the campus," he explains. "They have it backward. ROTC programs at Ivy League campuses would liberalize the military. That can only be good for this country."