The story of NIU’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) unit actually began in the early 1950s. President Leslie Holmes was interested in hosting an ROTC unit, and took a faculty vote on the issue. A large majority was in favor of the move, and Holmes took the matter up with Congressman Leslie Arends. Unfortunately there were no new military units being established at that time.
Then in the spring of 1968, NIU was asked by the Fifth Army District to submit an application for an ROTC unit. President Rhoten Smith once again put the matter to a vote of the University Council, where it passed, but not without some faculty opposition.
The NIU ROTC Huskie Battalion was established by Department of the Army General Order number 81 on December 17, 1968. The program was granted academic status in 1969 as the Department of Military Science. Eighty-three cadets were in the first class; the first 16 lieutenants were commissioned in the spring of 1971.
Like ROTC units across the country, the program was a target of anti-war protest in the 1970s. Shootings at Kent State and Jackson State in May of 1970 served as the catalyst for days of angry protest in DeKalb, with the ROTC in the crosshairs. President Rhoten Smith agreed to conduct a campus-wide referendum that would determine whether the ROTC would stay on campus. On May 20, votes were tallied and the campus spoke: by nearly 2,000 votes, NIU students chose to keep ROTC on campus.
In 2018, the Huskie ROTC Battalion celebrated its 50th anniversary. Since its foundation at the height of the Vietnam conflict, the program has commissioned more than 600 officers in the Active Army, the Army Reserves and the National Guard. Among those who have chosen military careers, their ranks extend all the way up to major general.
One of the best-known graduates of NIU’s ROTC program is United States Senator Tammy Duckworth. In 2018 she spoke at a commissioning ceremony in Altgeld Hall.
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