Even if erased in name this December, “don’t ask, don’t tell” and its legacy continue to limit overlap between Georgetown’s principal LGBTQ and Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps groups, according to members.
The GU Pride and the Hoya Battalion, the Army ROTC program at Georgetown, have traditionally had no relationship, according to GU Pride Publicity Chair Kevin Mercer (COL ’11). To join the ranks of LGBTQ organizations on campus would threaten students’ standings in ROTC, Mercer said.
Although GU Pride would openly welcome ROTC members, none have joined in the past, according to Mercer, who said intermingling of the two groups would take time as the U.S. Armed Forces adapts to the repeal of DADT.
“I doubt though, that we will see a sudden tidal wave of ROTC members joining, or even coming out, in part because … I still believe there is an institutional memory of homophobia, as well as sexism,” he said. “[This] will take a long time to be overcome and requires a significant cultural rather than policy change.”
The Hoya Battalion, which is under Army instruction, has issued a moratorium restricting its students from speaking to the press about the repeal of DADT, according to Freeman Condon (NHS ’14), a private cadet in the Georgetown University Army ROTC program.
The Battalion includes students from the ROTC programs at Georgetown University, American University, The George Washington University, Catholic University of America and The Institute for World Politics.
At other D.C. universities, relations between ROTC and LGBTQ groups have shifted.
Before the new year, American University’s premier LGBTQ clu,b Queers and Allies, openly opposed an Undergraduate Senate bill petitioning for ROTC access to university fitness facilities, decrying the group for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, according to a Queers and Allies press release. Since DADT’s repeal, the LGBTQ student group has withdrawn its opposition to the bill.
Students at American are now working to ease any tension between LGBTQ groups and ROTC programs at other universities. Brett Atansio, senator for the Class of 2013 at American, is reportedly working with GWU’s Student Association to change its ROTC policy in a similar fashion, according to The Eagle, American’s student newspaper.
Congress repealed the DADT policy on Dec. 18, 2010, after 17 years of the policy. The U.S. military’s DADT policy prohibited lesbian and gay service members from uncovering their sexual preferences and enabled officers to discharge those who they believed to be engaging in sexual relations with those of the same gender. The policy became federal law in 1993 under the Clinton administration.
