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.