ROTC returns after decades-long hiatus

For the first time in decades, Yale students will today attend courses on campus as part of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.

Twenty-one students are participating in the return of a program that left campus in 1972, amid protests against the Vietnam War. Yale’s restored Naval and Air Force units are smaller than those typical of ROTC programs — with 11 and 10 Yale students, respectively — and they lack a senior class to provide leadership. But ROTC officials say the units will grow over time, and they are adapting the program’s leadership structure to fit the makeup of their younger cohort.