NIU has not received any response to letters sent to the Department of Defense warning it to change the Reserve Officer Training Corps’ policy banning homosexuals from becoming officers or leave campus.

There is no “evidence the foundations of the Pentagon are shaking” after receiving the letters from the University Council, said Executive Secretary J. Carroll Moody.

The council instructed Moody to write the letters on its behalf at its March 7 meeting.

Council member J. Patrick White wrote the resolution passed by the council and included it in the letters. White said the ROTC controversy has become a “public relations issue” for the Defense Department.

Because of the numerous colleges that have sent similiar letters to defense leaders, the Defense Department will probably have to eventually make a position statement on the issue, White said.

Moody sent the letters to Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh, Jr., Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheyney and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin Powell.

According to the letters, the Defense Department has two years to remove the “discriminatory regulation” or NIU will “initiate action to terminate” its contract of the ROTC program.

Just as the council “would oppose a policy that discriminated women and minorities, so do we oppose a policy that does not provide equality of opportunity and treatment to those whose sexual preference supposedly makes them unfit for military service,” the letters stated.

“Surely breaches of military regulations by any member of the Armed Forces, whatever their race, sex or sexual preference, have been and will continue to be dealt with without declaring certain entire categories of personnel as ‘unsuitable’ for service,” according to the letters.

However, the letters also stated “that the overwhelming majority of those who supported this resolution expressed support for the ROTC program itself because of the opportunities campus-based programs provide students.”