Vandalism to ROTC Building Prompts Change in Uniform Policy at U. of Iowa By WILL POTTER
Officials at the University of Iowa, responding to vandalism and antiwar graffiti, decided on Monday to stop requiring cadets in the Reserve Officer Training Corps to wear their camouflage uniforms to class.
Lt. Col. Carol St. John, a professor of military science who oversees the university's ROTC program, said the move was meant to diminish the military presence on the campus. However, she said the physical safety of the 150 cadets in the program was not an issue.
"We were simply concerned that many cadets walk around campus, and if they are out there they are a very large profile. There are antiwar protests on campus: These are emotional young people who may not respond appropriately," she said, adding that no cadets have been accosted on the campus.
The two glass entrances to the ROTC building were found smashed early Friday, police officials said. Nothing was stolen from the building, and no arrests have been made. No antiwar messages were left at the building, and police officers said they do not know if the incident was an act of protest.
Messages like "Freedom dies when bombs fall" and "USA: rogue state" were found spray-painted on four other buildings on the campus the same morning, according to the police.
Anjali Khosla, a representative of the campus group Campaign Against War, said the organization does not support the vandalism and denies any involvement in it. Some people in the antiwar movement at Iowa are torn over the ROTC presence on the campus, Ms. Khosla said. "Nobody is crazy about the idea of fellow students being trained to kill people," she said, adding that students recognize that many of their peers enter the program to finance their education. She emphasized that her organization supports cadets on the campus and U.S. troops abroad.
Ms. Khosla said that tensions at Iowa over the war have increased in the past week. Activists distributing antiwar fliers have been "met with much more antagonism" and have had "fliers thrown back in their faces," she said.
Similar antiwar grafitti were reported at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque last Wednesday night. Campus police officers are investigating nine separate instances of spray-painted messages on university buildings, including the one that houses the Navy and Air Force ROTC. The messages included "Bush is a terrorist" and "War is murder."
Ben Tucker, a University of New Mexico graduate and antiwar activist, said he thinks that many people on the campus have been radicalized by the Bush administration's drive to war without the support of the United Nations, and by a local protest last Wednesday in which police used tear gas and pepper spray on protesters.
He said the grafitti indicate an increasingly frustrated movement willing to "engage in more of a diversity of nonviolent tactics."