College Campuses Now a Hotbed for Developing Frightening New Weapons

By Bryan Farrell, Voices of Central Pennsylvania. Posted October 2, 2008.

When it comes to replicating war, films like Saving Private Ryan or even the video game Call of Duty have nothing on a football game at Beaver Stadium. Underscoring George Carlin's famous rant describing the sport as a "20th century new-world-order paramilitary power struggle," fans at last spring's Blue-White Game were treated to more than just the typical combat metaphors of "blitz" and "aerial assault." At halftime, attendees were asked to applaud the choice to join the military during a mock swearing-in ceremony held at midfield for high school students who had recently enlisted.

This encroaching militarization of American culture conjured scant resistance. The lone voice of dissent to appear in the area newspapers came from a class of '83 alumnus who attended the game. His fellow letter-to-the-editor writers -- most of whom were students -- roundly dismissed his questioning of "whether participating in the military is still the right thing to do" when "our leaders ignore international law, national and world opinion."

There was a time, however, when college campuses were the epicenter of anti-war sentiment. In 1972 -- around the same time Carlin debuted his football bit, not coincidentally -- thousands of Penn State students protested the Vietnam War by sealing off the entire State College business district for a day and then surrounding the Applied Research Laboratory on campus -- a major Department of Defense contractor -- forcing it to shut down for three days.

The campus climate in 2008, on the other hand, is much less volatile. The major reason is, no doubt, the absence of a draft, but with more than five years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the prospect of another war in Iran and a slew of domestic issues directly affecting the nation's youth -- namely debt, inflation, access to health care and a faltering climate -- it's surprising that the weekly peace vigils at the Allen Street gates remain modest in number.

"Very few students have participated in the Iraq-era actions," said State College Borough Council member and Peace Center Treasurer Peter Morris. "Some show up at the big ones, like the fifth anniversary."

But when "big" only amounts to 150 participants -- of which a dozen or so are students, by Morris' estimate -- the difference on campus between now and previous war times is "night and day."

Perhaps this silence is a result of how little Penn State students know about the deep-seated and influential military culture that has taken hold of the university, particularly at their expense.

Since 2000, universities have seen defense-related research contracts increase 900 percent, from $4.4 billion in 2000 to $46.7 billion in 2006. As recently as 2003, Penn State ranked 48th on the Department of Defense's Research Development Technology and Expenditure Top 100 list, pulling in nearly $63 million in contract awards. But when all forms of Defense Department funding get added in -- for a number of obscure or untraceable projects -- the grand total is slightly more than $75 million.

Given that more than 50 percent of income tax dollars goes to the Pentagon, students and their parents are, in effect, helping to pay this bill. And with tuition rising another 5.9 percent this coming school year -- the 41st consecutive tuition increase at Penn State -- it's no wonder two-thirds of the student body are in debt.

Meanwhile, the university pulled in $1.6 billion in endowment funds last year, a 20 percent increase over the previous year, making it the 46th wealthiest university in the country. Not surprisingly, such corporate gifts come from defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Exxon Mobil, which, in exchange, get the privilege of recruiting students to work for the war machine.

Since Penn State is home to one of the U.S. Navy's top civilian research facilities, the aforementioned Applied Research Laboratories, science and engineering students are a prized commodity to the ever-expanding defense industry. ARL, which was founded in 1945, has also become the university's single largest research unit, with well over 1,000 employees and students working under its umbrella.

Penn State taps the "nonlethal" weapons market

Aside from the labs' longstanding work on traditional combat technologies -- such as hydrodynamics, propulsors and torpedo defense -- ARL has branched out into a field that's being touted by many military experts as the future of warfare, known best as nonlethal weapons.

Initially funded by a $42.5 million five-year contract with the U.S. Marine Corps in 1998, ARL's Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies continues to pull in millions more every year for what INLDT Director Andy Mazzara calls "a tremendously altruistic endeavor."

While the fundamental purpose of these weapons is to resolve a conflict without anyone getting killed -- a far superior objective to typical combat or law enforcement -- the benevolence Mazzara describes comes with several caveats.

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Bryan Farrell is a freelance journalist in New York whose work has appeared in many publications, including The Nation and In These Times.

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