The day after Kansas University’s annual commencement, in a ceremony in the Kansas Union Ballroom, 18 special young men and women were commissioned as officers in the armed services of the United States. The event, in and of itself, was not remarkable, as thousands of their peers participate in the same type of ceremony on campuses across the nation every May and June. The remarkable part is, plainly put, the group itself.

The all-volunteer force is working exceptionally well, thank you very much. Each year we have to turn away far more fully qualified and motivated applicants than we are able to accept for the Reserve Officers Training Corps programs and the service academies. This surplus of exceptional young men and women has been undiminished by the recent combat and danger involved in either the war on terrorism or the Iraq war; if anything, there are more applicants for our programs.

The vast majority of our officers are produced not by the service academies, but from our ROTC units. This program produces a special kind of officer, one who has been schooled in the basic elements of military training, and thus is ready to accept a commission and start serving the country as an officer, but also one who has been educated in civilian academia. The ROTC-educated officer has been exposed to a wide range of critical thought and opinions, both from his civilian professors and his fellow students, arguably much more so than his or her counterpart at a military academy. While there has been some concern over a perceived civilian-military “gap” produced by the all-volunteer force, the civilian-based education offered by the ROTC program becomes even more valuable.

KU has a proud heritage of producing such officers. The Army unit started in 1918, and the Navy and Air Force units came to Mount Oread in 1946, making KU one of only 50 campuses nationwide offering programs for all services. More than 4,000 officers have been commissioned over the years at KU.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the KU campus became the “Berkeley of the Midwest,” and was less than welcoming to ROTC cadets and midshipman. In line with antiwar sentiments sweeping the nation, there were moves to remove credit from ROTC classes, and even calls for KU to drop ROTC entirely.

The Military Science Building was the scene of several demonstrations and protests, and, on at least one occasion, the interior of the building was vandalized. Wearing one’s uniform on campus was frequently an adventure, and more often than not elicited negative and antimilitary comment by some fellow students and professors. But through it all, ROTC remained on campus.

In the past 30 years, the attitude on campus has evolved. During the past year especially, though a segment of students and faculty opposed the Iraq war, there has been no backlash against ROTC at KU. The focus of the antiwar movement was the administration and the policymakers, not those who are charged with executing policy. One of the largest campus reactions to the war was a Support the Troops rally that Chancellor Robert Hemenway staged on the lawn in front of Strong Hall. If Chancellor Laurance Chalmers had staged such an event during the Vietnam War, KU’s antiwar faction would most likely have razed Strong Hall!

We should all stop and remember these young men and women as they head off for their new careers, in service to the nation, and in service to us all. Their pay will be low considering the responsibilities they will shoulder and the hours they will have to work. They will be expected to deploy overseas on a regular basis, and there will be frequent family separations.

They will definitely be called on, at some point in their career, to step forward to “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” But they have been told this many times, and they are expecting it. This is what they volunteered for. And we should all be proud that KU continues to educate and contribute such individuals. Let it always be so.

— Capt. James S. Cooper, is a 1974 Kansas University graduate and a professor of naval science at KU.