ROTC

Even during the moribund years of ROTC - from 1973, when nine seniors graduated with Navy commissions, to 1976, when the Trustees re-established a Reserve Officer Training Program - military training was not a taboo consideration for Dartmouth undergraduates. Ralph Manuel '58, dean of the College, reports that during those years he was writing 12 to 24 recommendations each year for seniors who wanted to attend Officer Training School at Newport, Rhode Island.

Dartmouth's born-again ROTC program has been just as unobtrusive in the past nine months. Three members of the Class of 1980 - one woman, two men - enrolled in the program last fall and have been commuting to Northfield, Vermont, on Tuesday afternoons to join ROTC classes at Norwich University. This year they participated in leadership labs, agility training exercises, orienteering, shooting n the rifle range, and manual arms exercises which are the showy routines soldiers do with firearms while marching in formation.

One of the freshmen who took the first-year ROTC program is Patrick W. Guiney III '8O "I had pretty much decided before going to college to go ROTC if I could," Guiney said at the end of the spring term. "I wanted to go to Dartmouth bad - I would have come here regardless - and when they accepted ROTC that was nice." What is the hardest thing about ROTC? "Going up there - ROTC itself isn't hard at all." Guiney lives in West Point, New York, where his father is a retired Army colonel. He has applied for a three-year ROTC scholarship, which would pay for his tuition and contribute $200 per month for other expenses.