Section V

An Era of New Challenges: The Ripon ROTC Unit in the 1950s and 1960s

Once reestablished along the lines that had proven so successful in the 1920s and 1930s, the Ripon ROTC Unit seemed to remain remarkably unchanged for nearly two decades. Along with an academic program that remained fairly stable, the Unit followed an annual routine of activities and celebrations very much similar to that followed in the 1920s and 1930s. This routine began with special programs during freshman orientation and continued during the early fall with further demonstrations or displays during Homecoming and Parents' Weekend. Veterans' Day was celebrated with a special ceremony honoring Ripon alumni who had died in the service of their country. The highlight of the year was Military Week, usually held in February, with a tea dance; a special ceremony that included military drills, weapons demonstrations, and the presentation of the women elected to be unit sponsors; and climaxed with the lavish Military Ball. The presence of the president of the College and other key members of the administration, high ranking military visitors, and many alumni at the ball testified to the esteem in which ROTC was still held. Finally, during early spring, the Unit held military exercises and was given its annual inspection.

But during this time new major challenges arose both nationally and on campus so that the College and ROTC leadership saw these decades as a time when conditions made the continued maintenance of the traditional quality of the ROTC program at Ripon increasingly difficult. Their efforts were surprisingly successful, so that even if the Unit did not seem to retain quite the luster it enjoyed in its golden age, it still maintained its premier status on campus and still fulfilled its mission of producing high quality military leaders.

Of the new challenges facing the Ripon Unit, the most significant came with changing attitudes and policies in the nation and in the government. Of these changes, the most important was a new demand for economy in the government and especially in the new Department of Defense. This pressure for economy focussed attention on the small ROTC units where the per capita cost of each commissioned officer was high. Such scrutiny acted as a damoclean sword continually suspended over the head of the Ripon Unit and made the production of a sufficient number of officers each year the matter of continuous primary concern to both the officers and college administrators.

In 1951 the Department of Defense decreed that all ROTC units would be judged on the basis of the quantity and quality of the officers they produced annually. Units falling below prescribed minimum standards in either category could face probation or even immediate discontinuation. For most of this period, the production requirement seemed to present the College with its greatest challenge. Under this policy, a unit was expected to produce an absolute minimum of 25 newly commissioned officers a year. Given the size of the student body, this quota meant that the College would have to keep at least 50 percent of all upperclass males involved in ROTC, a task that seemed daunting. As a result, much of the concern of the military cadre assigned to the Unit and of the college administration in the 1950s and 1960s was focussed on meeting this quota, and the administrative history of the Unit in these decades seemed to revolve around a series of crises each of which was seen as threatening the capability of the Unit to reach the quota.

The first of these crises came in 1952. The Korean War suddenly made service in the infantry unpopular among cadets. Since the Ripon Unit followed an infantry program and its commissioned graduates were slated for service in the infantry, it suddenly began to prove difficult to get sophomore cadets from the Basic Course to volunteer for the Advanced Course. Sensing that this could result in Ripon being unable to meet its quotas, President Kuebler frantically petitioned the Army in 1952 to allow Ripon to switch to the new "Branch General" curriculum that was being introduced that year on an experimental basis and which would allow Ripon's cadets to choose service in branches other than infantry. Kuebler got his wish in 1953, by which time the end of the war took much of the odium off infantry service.

A new crisis arose in 1958 when a new economy move originating in Washington resulted in a restriction of the number of students Ripon could admit to the Advanced Course to 28. Since in the past only two of every three cadets admitted into the Advanced Course were commissioned a year later, the new PMS&T, Lieutenant Colonel B F. Delamater, could see that this quota reduction could lead to disaster for the Unit. Indeed, the College had already failed to meet the quota in 1956 and had escaped being placed on probationary status only on the basis of a direct plea to the Department of Defense from President Fred O. Pinkham who lamented that the class of 1956 was unusual in the number who had been "flunked out." Both President Pinkham and Delamater protested the 1958 reduction in terms of its probable impact on the Unit and the College received permission to raise the quota the next year to 35. This, however, was too late, and the class that graduated in 1960 fell way short of the quota as predicted. Probation was again barely avoided by a plea to Washington from Delamater and Pinkham who claimed that the shortfall was solely the result of the 1958 quota.

In the early 1960s, a new crisis arose as a national evaluation of the ROTC program focussed on the requirement for mandatory participation of all underclass males in the Basic Course. In 1916, when the legislation creating ROTC was written, the Basic Course was seen as a partial alternative to universal military training in providing all male students with valued training in citizenship. For this reason, the War Department and many others argued strenuously for making the Basic Course mandatory for all male students in schools with ROTC programs. By the 1960s, however, the idea of citizenship training had largely lost its attraction and the Basic Course was justified almost solely in terms of preparing cadets for the Advanced Course. As such, Congress, in formulating new legislation to govern ROTC, considered eliminating the mandatory requirement. At Ripon, belief in citizenship training died more slowly while the administration was convinced that a mandatory Basic Course was vital to recruiting enough cadets for the Advanced Course. In the end, the ROTC Vitalization Act of 1964 allowed colleges local flexibility in regards to the Basic Course. While this flexibility allowed Ripon to continue the mandatory requirement, finding any justification for doing so outside of expediency became increasingly difficult.

In between these crises, the quotas remained a matter of on-going concern so that everything possible was done to keep officer production up. Early in the 1950s, the College engaged in a money-raising drive of dubious propriety in which a distinctly anti-communist line focussed on the slogan "Seeing Red?." Businessmen were called upon to make $100 donations as scholarships for boys to enroll in Ripon and its ROTC where they would receive a politically wholesome education. In later years, both President Kuebler and President Pinkham sought to get the Department of Defense to make ROTC course work more flexible so that science majors could be induced to enroll in the Advanced Course.

Ironically, despite this fixation on the issue of quantity, the greatest and most embarrassing threat to the Unit in the 1950s and 1960s came in the area of quality. Although the Army had threatened in the 1950s to discontinue units that failed to produce quality officers, it had no way to measure quality. Then, in 1960, it was decided to rate units for quality on the basis of the performance of their graduates at the branch schools to which they were assigned after graduation. In 1960, President Pinkham was informed that 29.4 percent of the officers commissioned at Ripon who had then gone to Branch School Orientation Courses had finished in the bottom third of the graduates from the branch schools. The news in 1961, however, was far worse. Not only had 39 percent of the officers commissioned at Ripon finished in the bottom third of the graduates of branch schools, one had actually failed, giving Ripon a 4.3 percent failure rate and putting the College in the lowest 10 percent of the units in the nation in terms of quality of production and making it liable for probation. While President Pinkham protested against any decision against Ripon that would be based on the performance of just one officer, he nevertheless acknowledged that Ripon's showing was not one of which he could be proud. The news was even worse the following year when more than 56 percent of the officers commissioned at Ripon finished in the bottom third of the branch schools. Since no one had failed this time, however, this dismal figure brought no repercussions. Fortunately, the figures improved in 1964, when only 29 percent finished in the bottom third, and in 1965, when only 25 percent finished there. After 1965, the measure was no longer used and the quality issue was never again raised.

No explanation of Ripon's poor showing was ever offered and there is no record as to whether measures were taken that led to an improvement in the performance at the branch schools. However, the episode is suggestive of a distinct aspect of the Ripon ROTC program. The focus of that program was always on leadership and "quality" at Ripon was always identified with leadership. The purpose of the many activities sponsored by ROTC, alongside giving the Unit visibility and a sense of its character, was to provide leadership opportunities for the cadets. More important, as the preeminent activity and source of status, Ripon's ROTC attracted to it, and to possible careers in the Army, those students with the greatest leadership ability. Hence, as President Pinkham suggested in a letter to the Department of the Army, the real measure of the quality of Ripon's program lay in the performance of the officers who graduated at the top rather than in that of the class as a whole. The strength of the Ripon Unit lay in its ability to attract, train, and motivate a few leaders who were truly superior rather than in an ability to raise a far larger number to an above average performance.

The increasing difficulties faced by the Unit in meeting its quotas were, in part, due to changes in American outlooks that decreased the attractiveness and sense of distinction that once adhered to ROTC. But the recruitment difficulties were also, to a large degree, the product of changes at the College. There were a variety of such changes, but the basic problem was that the Ripon ROTC Unit no longer enjoyed the same high level of attention and support from the college community that it had attracted in earlier decades. Although, initially, the differences were not great, they were important in the new age dominated by officer production quotas. Ripon could meet its annual quotas of new commissioned officers only if the campus prestige of the Unit was such that large numbers of men were attracted into the Advanced Course.

Support from the administration and the faculty generally remained high during these decades. Indeed, the degree of this support was often a matter of comment by both cadre officers and outside military observers. One new PMS&T wrote after several months on campus in regard to the friendliness of the faculty and students to the Unit that, "I am amazed a dozen times a day at some new act or word." He attributed this friendliness on the part of faculty and administration to the fact that 85 percent or the male faculty were veterans themselves as was the president of the College. While the percentage of administrators and male faculty members with personal military experience diminished to about 70 percent in the 1960s, the level of support remained high. At the same time, although Presidents Kuebler and Pinkham did not altogether share President Evans' philosophic commitment to ROTC, they remained visible and vigorous supporters of the program.

Yet even here there were problems. The Unit did not enjoy the same cordiality in its relations with the business office as it did with the president and deans. While all departments of the College had some problems with the business office in a time when slender resources had to be stretched to attend to all needs, the ROTC Unit felt it always got less than its share. Part of the problem lay in the perception of ROTC held by civilians at Ripon and at other colleges. While ROTC was, by law, a college program which the government supported by providing instructors and some supplies, many on campus tended to see it as an Army program that was, or ought to be, totally funded by the government. They were, therefore, highly reluctant to commit college resources to its support. Moreover, since the officers assigned to the Unit were almost never elected to faculty committees or shared in any other way in the governance of the institution, unit officers felt they had less real access to the college budget-making decisions than did other academic departments.

As a result, many officers complained that the Unit was all but ignored by the College in terms of maintenance of the facilities assigned to it. While its contract with the Army called on Ripon to provide the Unit with classroom and office space equivalent in kind and quality to that provided to other departments, many in the Unit felt that the spaces provided were clearly sub-standard in both quality and in the way they were maintained. This frustration over perceived lack of support was exacerbated by the fact that Ripon's annual district inspection occurred at the same time as that of St. Norbert College where the facilities given to the ROTC Unit were far superior in terms of quality and the care given to them. Ripon officers tried to improve their own situation by investing personal funds and time to remodel and paint office and classroom spaces and to make up for the lack of quality in the spaces assigned by assuring that weapons were kept in superior condition. All of this created an atmosphere in which relations between the Unit and the College were marred by recurring angry exchanges between the PMS&T and the comptroller over facilities in discussions and correspondence in which screen doors and expenditures of less than $20 figured heavily.

At the same time the support that the Unit had previously received from students also began to decline. This fall off had little to do with the Unit itself. It remained highly visible and respected and was still the preeminent student organization on campus. Unit activities received wide coverage in the College Days, with events such as the selection of the battalion commander being considered front page news. The Unit also received more pages of coverage in the each year's Crimson than any other student activity including the athletic teams. Overall, incoming students at Ripon in the 1950s and throughout most of the 1960s could hardly escape the conclusion that it was the ROTC Unit more than any other organization that gave the campus its character and that selection as either battalion or company commander or sponsor was the highest honor to which one could aspire during a four-year career on campus.

Instead, the diminishment of student support was chiefly the result of the rapid growth of competing social organizations and sources of recreation and entertainment during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1920s and 1930s the student body had been rather dependent on the ROTC Unit for planning and organizing all social life on campus. After the war this was no longer so. Movies and, later, television provided opportunities for entertained distraction while automobile travel became far more available so that getting away from campus became much more possible. On campus, other organizations became involved with social activities. A Junior Prom rose to rival the Military Ball as the premier social event on campus. The most significant change in this regard was the growing importance given to fraternities and sororities in student social life. In the postwar years, students began to focus their social energies on fraternal living groups rather than on the College as a whole. By 1950, the College, with a student body of about 700, supported seven fraternities and five sororities, so that even many cadets found fraternities to be an attractive alternative to ROTC as a center for social activities.

The impact of this slow reduction of student support on the ROTC program was initially felt only in the inability to keep the ROTC Band alive or to create a healthy and long-lived ROTC fraternity or cadet officers club similar to those that flourished before the war. Later, during the 1960s the impact of the widening range of competing attractions at the College was increasingly felt by the rifle and drill teams which had earlier been the source of pride for the Unit and the College.

Indeed, during the 1950s, the newly reconstituted rifle team all but matched the outstanding records of the teams of the 1920s. Under its captain, George W. Chapman '52, the rifle team finished first in the Fifth Army Area Intercollegiate Match in the spring of 1951 and, again, in the Fifth Army Meet the next year. In 1956, the team under co-captains John R. Howland '56 and Arthur R. Lundeburg '56 again won the Fifth Army Area Meet, captured the W. R. Hearst Trophy and took third place in the Army's national meet where David F. Minne '56 shot the highest score of any cadet in the Fifth Army Area. In 1957, the Ripon team successfully defended its Hearst Trophy championships and Carleton W. Voltz '58 shot an unprecedented 199/200 to lead the nation in collegiate marksmanship.

This, however, was the high point. Afterwards the performance of the rifle team diminished. The best it could do in the 1960s was a second place finish in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Meet in 1965 and a seventh place finish in the Fifth Army Area matches in 1966. The major problem in the 1960s was that cadets tended to lose interest in the team as they became upperclassmen and found other activities more attractive. As a result, the coaches of the rifle teams found themselves constantly starting over each year with teams that were more and more made up of freshmen.

The history of the drill team followed a similar pattern. The postwar drill team was first presented at the 1951 homecoming football game. During the next several years it performed at football and basketball games on campus and during Military Week. In 1956, however, it began to compete in regional and national drill competitions and achieved significant success in the early 1960s, when it took first place in regulation drill in all-Wisconsin meets in 1960 and 1961. The team reached its peak during 1962-63 when, under the leadership of team captain David F. Hillard '64, it competed in a number of meets never finishing below third. The following year the team was invited to participate in the Mardi Gras Parade in New Orleans. However, although the team continued to compete in regional meets after this, it rarely finished above third place.

The problem with the drill team was the same as with the rifle team. In the 1960s it became increasingly difficult to keep cadets interested in the team after their freshman or sophomore years. Even in 1965, the year after the drill team had been invited to participate in the Mardi Gras Parade, team Captain Arnold R. Johnson '66 found only two cadets interested in returning to the team. Thus, even though the success of the team had been enough to inspire the formation of a women's drill team in 1967, it was not enough to overcome the other attractions cadets found on campus.

Despite the fact that the Unit found it increasingly difficult to maintain the program of campus activities that had made it so successful in the 1920s and 1930s, it was still successful in its primary mission of carrying out a program of quality education and commissioning excellent officers. The Unit continued to do well in annual inspections. After the war, the Army did not reinstitute the recognition of Distinguished Colleges based on inspections, so that rank among ROTC units was far harder to determine. In some years, annual inspections gave no grades other than "satisfactory" and "unsatisfactory." Although the Ripon Unit always received a "satisfactory," comments on the inspections indicated that the Unit retained much of the superiority that had won for Ripon recognition as a "Distinguished College" in the earlier decades.

The continued capacity of the Ripon Unit to produce officers of the highest quality was recognized in another way, however. During the 1950s, the Army began the practice of awarding commissions in the regular army to 600-700 of the 12,000-14,000 graduating ROTC cadets. Each year, the Ripon Unit took great pride in the fact that it won a disproportionately large number of these commissions, usually picking up four to seven annually as an indication that the Unit continued to graduate some exceptionally fine officers.

In 1969, the Unit celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding. The centerpiece of this celebration was a contest held in 1968 to design a new shoulder patch. The contest was extremely popular among the cadets, most of whom submitted at least one design proposal. Most of the 125 designs submitted in the contest have been lost, but a number have survived and they indicate that the ideas contained in the winner represented something of a consensus in terms of the view the cadets had of their program at this time. The winning design incorporated the school colors of red and white, which also symbolized the unit's motto of "Faith and Courage," the popular college athletic emblem (the head of a Native American), the college name, a set of palm leaves to symbolize scholarship, and the date, 1919. All in all, the badge would suggest that the cadets in 1969 were very much proud of their College, that they associated it with quality, and that they were proud of the tradition they felt was represented in their Unit. Thus, however severe and consuming the challenges and difficulties that had confronted the Unit in the 1950s and 1960s had been, the confidence of the cadets in the integrity of the Unit in itself had not been shaken.

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