ROTC To Remain At Hopkins


     Johns Hopkins will continue its ROTC program despite the
military's ban on openly homosexual cadets, President William C.
Richardson has decided.

     Richardson said that Hopkins will continue, in concert with
other universities, to oppose the ban. It will also add to its
official non-discrimination statement wording that acknowledges
the conflict between university policy and the Pentagon's.

     Hopkins will also, in appropriate circumstances, consider
filing friend of the court briefs in lawsuits challenging the gay
ban, Richardson said.

     The president's decision tracks with the recommendations
last month of a committee of six Homewood faculty, students and
administrators. Those recommendations, in turn, were consistent
with the sentiment of the Homewood campus community, as expressed
in a survey taken late last year.

     The committee reported that a majority of both the
committee's members and survey respondents opposed the military's
continuing gay ban, the "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue"
compromise crafted by the Clinton administration and Congress. 

     But the committee, chaired by Homewood dean of enrollment
Robert Massa, also said that responding to the ban by phasing out
the Army's Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Hopkins
would fly in the face of campus sentiment.

     "We do acknowledge that ROTC is a valuable component of the
university, which provides an opportunity for many students to
afford Hopkins, train for a career and become positive forces in
a military that is in need of change," the committee report said.