In the wake of comments made by Senators Obama and McCain at a recent Columbia University forum, students there are showing renewed interest in restoring ROTC to campus. And similar things are happening at Yale. Last night, a debate at the Yale Political Union saw the case for ROTC's return forcefully argued--and this morning, the Yale Daily News is following up with a strong staff editorial:

Although Yale boasts the motto "For God, For Country and For Yale," it does not, in 2008, live up to that second vow. As the YPU concluded in its debate last night, the time is right for the University to resurrect ROTC.

In bringing the program back to campus, however, the University must not abandon its opposition to Congress' discriminatory policy that prevents openly gay Americans from enlisting. In fact, it should seize such a moment to reinvigorate the debate.

As it stands, Yale's strategy to combat "don't ask, don't tell" is, practically speaking, ineffective. Yale Law School's longstanding stance against providing equal access to JAG recruiters, for example, is the closest the University has come to prevailing. That approach ended with a unanimous loss at the U.S. Supreme Court more than a year ago.

There remains, however, a serious problem: The military unabashedly discriminates. We, like so many in the Yale community, believe "don't ask, don't tell" is wrong. The next president should call for its overhaul. But not allowing ROTC won’t achieve a thing.

"It's kind of like not dealing with the problem at all as opposed to trying to change it," said Taylor Giffen '09, who spends all day Thursday at the University of Connecticut in the Air Force ROTC.

On a more fundamental level, Yale, of all schools, should reconnect to its history as a college at the forefront of national defense and public service. As Gen. William Odom, a Yale professor who passed away this summer, put it in 2006, "When a republic's upper strata of youth contribute no leadership to the upper ranks of the military, is the republic really safe?"

Or just take Major-General Leonard Wood, the Rough Rider commander who delivered a rousing Woolsey Hall speech in 1915.

"At the present time, the country is woefully unprepared to resist a great power," he said to a standing ovation. "The obligation to defend the country rests on everyone!"

Then he asked a good question. "Have you nothing to defend?"

In other news, Army ROTC is returning to Salisbury University this fall after a decade of absence, and North Idaho College is welcoming ROTC to its campus this fall.