The focus on ROTC at MIT and Harvard comes at a time when the military has begun to take unprecedented steps against gay cadets.

Commission Denied

Last week, a ROTC commission recommended that the Army ask cadet James M. Holobaugh to pay back $2500 in ROTC scholarship money after he told officials that he was gay.

And MIT student Robert L. Bettiker wrote last week in The Thistle, a liberal student paper at MIT, that he had been denied a commission and asked to pay back the value of his $38,000 scholarship by Navy ROTC because he was openly gay.

An administrative policy of the U.S. military states that being gay is incompatible with military service. An executive order from the President or an act of Congress could overturn the policy, San Francisco author Allan R. Berube said yesterday.

"The military's argument that gays are incompatible with military service is wrong. There is no evidence to back it up, and overwhelming evidence to contradict it," said Berube, who has recently published a book on gay soldiers in World War II.