And while any campus pressure can make a difference, protests from major research universities like Harvard and MIT are especially important because those institutions garner a large number of Department of Defense projects and grants. In addition, MIT sends a large number of officers to the navy each year.

Sue Hyde, a specialist on military affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, says that schools like MIT often have very close relationships with the Pentagon.

"Because these school are working on research projects, you can bet the administrators of the various departments know people in the Pentagon," Hyde says, noting that Deutsch--a close associate of Cheney--opened his letter to Cheney with "Dear Dick."

Finally, activists say major universities have tremendous political clout, on both the state and national level, making their actions unlikely to be ignored by elected representatives.

The University of Wisconsin, for instance, recently took issue with the military's anti-gay policy, and some say it is only a matter of time before the Wisconsin legislature checks in with their concurrence.

"If you had Derek Bok lobby in Washington, that would darn well have some influence," Dyer says. "Or, I think if ROTC got kicked off one-fourth of the campuses in the country, the policy would have to change."