CAP ROTC WTF

In a very good article Dale Russakoff writes in the January 12 Washington Post

He said he assumes he joined only because he supported the return of ROTC to the Princeton campus. As an undergraduate, Alito was a member of Princeton's Army ROTC unit when it was expelled from the campus -- a move that he said "rankled" him because "the attitude seemed to be that the military was a bad institution and that Princeton was too good for the military."

The Army ROTC unit was back on campus by the time Alito wrote his 1985 job application, but he said the Navy and Air Force units were not.

This last sentence is true in the same sense that World War II was over by the time Alito wrote his job application. Army ROTC returned to Princeton in 1972 before Alito graduated. Thus he claims he joined CAP to advocate a policy that had already been implemented.

At the time the Harvard Crimson was the Harvard Red a Leninist rag, but, I think that they can be trusted to get the facts right.
ROTC was back at Princeton by September 1973

Published On Friday, September 28, 1973 12:00 AM
By NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

[snip]

More than three years after the 1969 outburst of campus antiwar protest, the ROTC program is limited but credited at Cornell and Penn, extracurricular at Princeton and dead and buried at Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth. "

This article follows up a report on the return in progress of ROTC to Princeton

Published On Thursday, January 13, 1972 12:00 AM
By NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

[snip]

ROTC is making determined efforts to return to both Princeton and Brown, according to the student newspapers at both universities.

At Princeton, the Board of Trustees will vote next Saturday on whether ROTC should return. The faculty had decided in the spring of 1968 to end all academic credit for ROTC courses, and in the spring of 1970 all ROTC contracts expired and were not renewed.

In a university-wide referendum last spring, Princeton undergraduates voted to bring back ROTC as an extracurricular activity, and the Princeton administration decided that ROTC had met the necessary guidelines for reinstatement.

This fall, however, both the faculty and the undergraduate assembly voted against ROTC's return. But shortly afterwards, the University Council--a committee of faculty, students, and administration officials--voted in favor of its return, with both Goheen and President-elect William G. Bowen assenting.

It is clear from the September 73 article that the vote on January 15 1972 reinstated ROTC at Princeton (unless next Saturday means January 22 1972).

Alito's lies are so incredible that Russakoff must have assumed that the issue was still not resolved when Alito was an alumnus of Princeton. The substitution of "the time Alito wrote his 1985 job applicatio" for before the end of the 1872-3 academic year is sloppy (even if the claim is not literally false).

Background

Attempting to explain his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) Samuel Alito claims he has no recollection of the organisation or why he mentioned his membership in 1985, but that he joined because he thought ROTC should be brought back to Princeton. This is odd, since CAP was principly devoted to arguing in favor of gendre discrimination not the ROTC. It is odder since ROTC was back in Princeton by the time Alito was an alumnus. His current version is that he was upset that only army ROTC and not Navy and Air Force ROTC was re-established.

I don't think any person of normal intelligence can doubt that this combination of extreme amnesia and an extremely vivid recollection of attachment to the ROTC of branches of the armed forces could possibly reflect anything other than perjury. We will soon see how many Senators have no problem with a felon on the Supreme court.

Rule of law and all that.