October 20, 2008
Ron Robinson Foundation President
Dear Colleagues, You have heard that America will be the land of the free as long as we are the home of the brave. America is blessed to have so many young men and women who are willing to defend our rights. I work with these outstanding young Americans every day. Nevertheless, our freedoms are jeopardized by America’s elites who continue to turn their backs on those willing to serve. And “turning their backs” is a polite phrase to describe the reprehensible treatment our best young men and women receive from America’s top schools. At our country’s most prestigious universities—including Yale, Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia— students who wish to serve in ROTC are still prohibited from meeting in their classrooms, earning equal academic credit, or even receiving proper public recognition for their service. These universities joined 18 other colleges in an unsuccessful legal bid to keep ROTC and military recruiters out of their schools and overturn the pro-service Solomon Amendment. These elite universities unleashed their legal departments and lobbying arms to fight ROTC all the way up to and through a unanimous Supreme Court decision that ruled against them. It is urgent that our colleges and universities—and their accomplices in Republican and Democrat administrations alike—end their discriminatory practices towards those who want to protect America in a hostile world. We need to stand with, not against, those who would serve in our armed forces. This is a fight Young America’s Foundation has engaged in throughout our 40-year history. We have seen legislation passed to support student rights—especially at the initiative of our director of military outreach, Flagg Youngblood, when he was a student at Yale University—but we have yet to see it implemented by a recalcitrant Bush administration. Helping these students must become a priority for the new president, secretary of defense, and a new Congress. I urge you to demand our elected officials stand with those men and women who are willing to fight for our rights. Do not let these universities give you any more excuses as to why these ROTC students should be treated as second class citizens. They are among the noblest young Americans.
Sincerely,
Ron Robinson President