ROTC debate tests limits of empathy

Since the campus controversy over ROTC began, we have heard repeated assertions that the harm done to gay students under current University policy must be weighed against the harm done to straight students under the proposed change. The debate, thus framed, pits the interests of one discrete group against the competing interests of another group.

It is easy to see where this logic leads: kicking ROTC off campus will not have any obvious tangible benefit for gay students (i.e. they will still be excluded from the military), but the move will tangibly hurt straight students who want to serve their country. So why should we adopt a policy that has obvious costs and no obvious benefits?

This reasoning has led some to declare that removing ROTC from campus is a "no-win" proposition. Gay students, we are reminded, will not be better off just because their straight classmates can no longer join ROTC. Limiting opportunities for straight students does not expand opportunities for gay students.

That may be true, but it doesn't respond to the fundamental claim underlying the efforts to phase out ROTC. The crux of the argument is this: the deprivation of all is preferable to the depriviation of some. Thus, the University shouldn't make opportunities available to as many people as possible; it should make opportunities available to everybody or to nobody at all. It is better for us to all suffer together than for some of us to suffer alone.

This is not the sort of aphorism that inspires enthusiastic assent. The utilitarian in each of us protests: equality is only an abstract good! We'd rather all be happy and unequal than equally unhappy. How could a policy that ensures equality of deprivation ever be preferable to a policy that maximizes overall happiness?

We all know the answer to that question because we have all felt the impulse to sacrifice some measure of our own happiness to keep a friend company in his or her pain. Friendship is made possible by that sort of empathy — our willingness to literally put ourselves in the other's place, to feel what the other is feeling.

It is true that we cannot remove another person's adversity simply by sharing in it. But when we voluntarily forego a privilege that is denied to our friends, we enmesh our own interests with theirs. This is a prerequisite for meaningful social action. We will be genuinely invested in the amelioration of our friends' condition only when we are willing to withhold from ourselves that which is withheld from our neighbors.

The movement to dismiss ROTC from campus is a show of solidarity with the LGBT community of Princeton. It is a clear statement that the future and present happiness of straight Americans is bound up inextricably with the happiness of gay Americans. Solidarity is partly a matter of self-denial. If we choose to deny ourselves the opportunities that ROTC offers, it is only because we cannot in good faith enjoy what our friends must do without.

We would be terribly mistaken to dismiss this show of solidarity as an empty, inconsequential gesture. The alternative is for each of us to say, "I'll take whatever I can get. I'll make some effort to help my buddy get a good deal in life; but at the end of the day, I'm going to take what's being offered to me."

Once we dissociate our own happiness from the happiness of our neighbors, we lose the impetus to fight on their behalf. If we cannot empathize with our friends — if we cannot share in their deprivations — then we will not pursue their interests as vigorously as we pursue our own.

It is unfortunate that our campus discourse on the ROTC resolution tends to treat straight and gay students as two groups whose interests happen to diverge. "Don't ask, don't tell" persists precisely because straight Americans perceive the policy as having no effect on them personally. The whole point of kicking ROTC off campus is to create an environment in which the national policy has the same impact on straight and gay alike. Only by aligning our interests in this way can we foster the sort of empathic friendships on which all social progress depends. Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi is a religion major from Potomac, Md. He can be reached at golubcow@princeton.edu.