Ranting to /dev/null

More punks busted

In addition to arresting the "Equality Riders" a few weeks ago, NDSP has now arrested or cited several anti-ROTC protesters outside Main. The protesters were from the Catholic Worker Movement, a neo-Communist pacifist group with Catholic roots. It is not an organ of the Catholic Church.

I'm not going to address the appropriateness of ROTC on campus from a Catholic perspective because, well, I'm not Catholic, and don't believe that educational institutions are part of the institution of the church. So though churches may run schools, schools are not churches and do not have the same kind of ecclesiological priorities. As such, I do not believe that it's much of a moral issue.

On the legal side of things, these people were trespassing. I don't care what you're here for: this is private property, so unless you've been invited, umm, go away.

But there's a more significant legal issue that pertains to ROTC as such. ROTC is an arm of the US military. Congress is explicitly authorized in Art. I, § 8 to raise and support armies. A recent Supreme Court case, Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47 (2006), the Court held in a unanimous ruling that Congress is entirely capable of requiring any school that accepts federal funding to permit military recruiters on campus with the same level of access as the most favorably-treated non-military recruiter. So if ND wants any money from the government at all, it needs to allow ROTC on campus.

Does that mean that it needs to build them a building and run a program to the extent that it does? No, probably not. But the protesters seem to want ND to cut off all contact with ROTC as it violates their pacifist sensibilities. And that's just not going to happen.