Career week opened at Yale… and many Yale Law School students showed off the skills they honed in the ivory towers of Ivy League academia… preparing themselves to be social protesters.
Approximately 40 Yale Law students protested the appearance of military recruiters by staging a “silent protest”, wearing camouflaged bandannas over their mouths demonstrating against the recent court ruling that required the school to open its doors to recruiters from the armed forces despite the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy on homosexuals serving.
The only time you hear a liberal complaining about a loss of funds to the military is over this issue. From the New Haven Register:
The students carried signs that referred to the 11,000 gays who have been dismissed from the military since the 1993 policy went into effect, a loss the congressional General Accounting Office said cost the nation $364 million in wasteful resources.
Yale had barred recruiters on the campus since 1978 because of its non-discrimination policy requiring all employers allowed on campus not to discriminate on the basis of, among other things, sexual orientation. The military prohibits openly gay people from serving.
Trouble was, Yale gets $300 million a year from the federal government, and under terms of the Solomon Amendment in 1995, can have that funding pulled if it does not allow recruiters on campus. This was upheld after a recent court battle.
To be honest, I’m not certain where I come down on the issue of openly gay people serving in the military. I pretty much don’t care. But I don’t like the idea of Yale preventing students from having the opportunity to meet with recruiters on their campus because of their disagreement on the policy.
Yale could have kept the military out so long as they didn’t take the federal money. However, when it came time to choose between principles and money, Yale took the cash.
Source:
O’Leary, Mary E. “Silent Protest at Yale.” New Haven Register. October 2, 2007.
9 responses so far ↓
I find this story interesting in a lot of ways. For one, the military’s ban on openly gay personnel is pretty stupid. Most interesting, though, is the fact that someone is protesting the military, which is kind of a taboo these days.
I suspect that there will be a lot of knee-jerk responses to this.
As for money, if there’s any university that could live if the feds pulled their funding, it’s Yale (and Harvard, too). Their endowment is HUGE. I mean, have you seen their library? Wow.
Screwy logic , HH. The law students don’t represent Yale; they represent themselves. Yale as an institution was wrong to try to deny the military access to the campus and they got their peepee wacked but that doesn’t make Clinton’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy any good from either a human rights or a fiscal responsibility perspective. Now that Peter Pace is gone from the JCS and Mullen is in, I think you may see a change to a rational policy consistent with equal rights stuff. BTW, it is absurd to train somebody – at great expense – because he/she didn’t declare he/she was gay and later dismiss that person if by some chance the local leadership finds out about the gayness. A lot of commanders in Iraq are looking the other way on this anyway.
I agree. It would probably be best if the policy were dropped… I’m not really convinced by the arguments against having openly gay people serve. But my mental jury is out on this one a bit…
But I do find this interesting as you do Ghengis, in that the military is being openly opposed, and that Yale hardly needs that federal funding, so why give up the fight.
Regardless, I am pleased that recruiters will be allowed to go to Yale now.
[quote comment="20209"] Yale as an institution was wrong to try to deny the military access to the campus and they got their peepee wacked [/quote]
here here!
For the policy wonks:More generally, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has come to describe any instance in which one person must keep their sexual orientation and any related attributes, including their family, a secret, but where deliberate lying would be undesirable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don‘t_ask,_don’t_tell
http://dont.stanford.edu/commentary/evaluation101.pdf
I suppose one of the ideas behind DADT is a good one–sexual orientation shouldn’t really be an issue, so no one should make one of it–but that it has the effect of forcing people into secrecy doesn’t make the military a better, more effective or more efficient organization. Also, discharging anyone who actually does come out only serves to waste the service of people who would otherwise be active and loyal soldiers (and a share of people who probably wouldn’t be so great, to be honest–it’d cut across all kinds, but that’s not really the point).
I don’t know what the actual policy answer is to that, but it seems to me that the whole matter of sexual orientation ought to be treated with a little more indifference.
The students’ posturing on this knows no limits! The Supreme Court specifically stated that although the schools must allow military recruiters they are permitted to VOCALLY (or otherwise) protest military policy. That said, this whole “gag” issue misses the mark. What’s more, want to bet that Yale has a speech code which truly gags speech?
Banning my comments, which are of truth, really gets your point across. How are the complaints of Yale University allowing military recruiters on campus any different than that of those complaining on behalf of not allowing the Catholic Hospitals to disperse Plan B???
Oh yeah – Yale Law School – the same dunderheads that are aiding and abetting illegal aliens in New Haven… glad to see they are staunchly upholding the law here… gag me… with a spoon… freaking hypocrites.
And I wonder how much of my tax dollars are helping these little newsmongers to get their degrees. They all make me sick.
As for DADT – what is it they want ? They want to wear make-up in the fox holes or something. Who really cares. Why are they making it such an issue ? Why don’t they just forget about their sexual orientation for a minute and just get on to the business at hand.
You must log in to post a comment.