Though the terms of this Fall's debate over ROTC will be new to most Harvard students, the arguments for reinstating ROTC are neither new nor unpredictable.

The seven pro-ROTC arguments in the following assessment are drawn from statements made by President Bok, Col. Robert H. Pell, former professor of Military Science, Boston University faculty who support the reestablishment of B.U. ROTC. representatives of the armed forces, and students who support the reinstatement of ROTC at Harvard.

1) ROTC helps preserve the tradition of a "civilian military" under the direction of an independent-minded officer corps.

For its first 30 years, until the end of World War II, ROTC aimed at recruiting a large corps of "reserve amateurs," men who could fulfill responsible positions in the military because--although they had not risen through the ranks--they had benefitted from both a ROTC and a liberal course of training.

Since World War II, ROTC has shifted towards recruiting highly-skilled career soldiers and professional specialists to meet the needs of a smaller, more technically sophisticated military. During the sixties, only those ROTC students who enlisted to forestall the draft were likely to maintain an independent "civilian consciousness." This reservoir of prospective civilian-oriented ROTC cadets no longer exists.

Even without ROTC, nothing exists to prevent military men from spending time in liberal arts colleges--as many do--or to prevent Congress from authorizing more scholarships to induce non-ROTC students to pledge long terms of military service.

U.S. Army Gen. Hugh B. Hester, ret., has said that ROTC is self-defeating because, in anything, ROTC programs distract students from more useful study in regular Arts and Sciences courses. Because of their rank and because of time wasted on ROTC courses of little value, ROTC graduates, Hester wrote this summer, often prove more difficult to train in complex technical skills than do regular college graduates new to the military.

Finally, it is not clear that ROTC could contribute significantly to an independent-minded military. It is not very likely that a student who volunteers for ROTC under no draft pressure would openly question prevailing U.S. policy.

Critics of the military could easily point to the cover-up of U.S. bombing in Cambodia--a possibly illegal act which required the active cooperation of hundreds of enlisted men and dozens of officers--as one piece of evidence among many calling the independent thinking of military leaders into severe question.

2) Harvard makes a unique contribution to national security by training "brilliant young men" with "God-given leadership abilities," as Pell called them, to lead the army in place of presumably less gifted, less broadminded non-ROTC enlisted men.

A strong case for the moral commitment which liberal Harvard gentlemen bring to the military would be difficult to make. The wounded and homeless of Indochina could best testify to the "humanizing" influence of Harvard men such as Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, James Schlesinger '50, Henry Kissinger '50, Elliot Richardson '41, and Louis F. Fieser, Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry, Emeritus, and the inventor of napalm.

Faculty objections to ROTC in 1969 focused largely on the incompatibility of an outside-controlled, pre- professional military training program with the principles of a liberal arts college and the potential surrender of academic freedom implicit in hiring teachers who might feel reluctant to publicly question executive or military policy.

In its 1968 report to the Faculty, the Harvard-Radcliffe Policy Committee (HRPC) said that "any aspect of the status of ROTC at Harvard which is a disservice to the principles of the liberal arts institution cannot possibly be a true service to the national interest."

In addition, members of Congress along with radicals and other liberals are questioning to what degree the military has been involved in illegal clandestine activities, particularly in Indochina.

Howard Zinn, professor of Political Science at B.U., questioned last month whether, under Federal conspiracy laws, universities which train and recruit military personnel might be held partly responsible for illegal and unconstitutional military activities.