To the Editor:
I really must express my gratitude to Dan Richman '95 for his column ("The True Problem for Gays and the Military," April 20). Here I was thinking that the reason that my father has warned me that if I'm queer I'm not welcome home and the reason that I have to worry each time I "come out" that I might be losing a friend is because ROTC is on this campus. But thanks to Richman I now realize that all of this was really because of homophobia.
The queer community at Dartmouth is neither narrow nor stupid. We know that homophobia is our ultimate target. Unlike him, we haven't "been so wrapped up" in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps that we have lost sight of our "real" problem. But homophobia isn't centralized; there is no one action that we can take to dismantle it. Homophobia lies within our health policies, our media, our educational system and our military. Fighting homophobia requires fighting its presence in each and every one of these areas. And on the Dartmouth campus its most obvious manifestation is the presence of the ROTC program.
Richman says that our true focus should be towards education so that people realize that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is unacceptable. What does he think the queer community is doing with the ROTC issue? We are demanding that Dartmouth teach students that discrimination is wrong through example: by removing a program that discriminates from its campus. Instead, the educational message that Dartmouth sent was that discrimination is okay when it is convenient.
I must also take issue with Richman's assertion that the removal of ROTC would "only" have symbolic value. Perhaps this is true in regards to changing the national military policy (though personally, I believe it is going to take numerous "symbolic" actions before one of substance occurs). However, within the context of the Dartmouth community the continuation of ROTC does not feel "inconsequential." When I first heard the decision on Saturday afternoon it felt deeply and personally painful. It served as a very insulting and hurtful reminder that my human rights are considered debatable and that my inclusion within Dartmouth's mythical "community" is expendable.
I am not naive enough to think that the removal of ROTC from Dartmouth will eliminate homophobia, but I am intelligent enough to realize that it is dozens of such "small" actions which will ultimately achieve that goal.
HEATHER SEARLES '94
