Tuesday, 2 December 2008

Columbia NROTC poll results are in

Columbia Spectator reports the aggregate vote of Columbia College, General Studies, and SEAS as 1502-no to 1463-yes. The separately tallied result for Barnard is 736-no to 453-yes.

The splits for the CC, GS and SEAS polls are unknown because the votes were counted together. That's meaningful because only 39 votes separated yes from no across 3 colleges, so it's possible that 1 or 2 of the 3 college student bodies voted in favor of NROTC.

If the colleges tied 2 to 2, that would be interesting.

Even if only SEAS voted for NROTC, that would also be interesting given that the NROTC initiative came from SEAS. The interest is recipocral - Navy ROTC's interest in Columbia is primarily for SEAS engineers, which means NROTC conceivably would have a disproportionate impact and benefit for SEAS students. If only SEAS students voted for NROTC and the program benefits them the most, would it be fair for their classmates to deny them the opportunity? Again, I don't know that SEAS students voted for NROTC or not, but it would be interesting if they did.

11DEC08 UPDATE: SEAS and GS voted for NROTC. CC and Barnard voted against.

Eric

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