3. The Reserve Officer Training Corps
The ROTC was born in 1862, and for most of the ensuing century existed with little controversy, providing basic and some advanced military training for students enrolled at most American universities. The Vietnam War changed the ROTC, in most schools compulsory before 1964. As the war became controversial during the 1960s, some universities dropped the ROTC following opposition from students, and it became voluntary at those schools where it remained. Where it was dropped from the campus it continued to exist in the nearby community as a component of US Army Reserve or National Guard activities.
Protests against the war included protests against the ROTC and at some schools enrollees in the Corps were instructed not to wear uniforms on campus. The ROTC existed and still exists, primarily as a means of supplementing the output of college-trained commissioned officers from the service academies. During the Vietnam War it played a major role in providing officers to all branches of the service, and as the war dragged on a significant number of ROTC enrollees were former enlisted men, with prior service in Vietnam, who presented valuable experience in all areas of the military operation. By 1968 Army ROTC programs were the greatest source of commissioned officers for the Army, producing well over 12,000 new officers per year.
