Saturday, the Alexander Hamilton Society hosted the conference Service and Society: Engaging the Military and the University in Roone Arledge Auditorium.

Speakers at the conference included among others Prof. Peter Awn, Director of the Middle East Institute, Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. President of the Hamilton Society and organizer of the event, John McClelland served as a Special Operations Combat Medic for five years with the 1st Ranger Battalion. The conference, sponsored by a coalition of the Columbia Political Union, College Republicans, College Democrats, the Roosevelt Institute's Columbia chapter, and the Columbia Military Veterans Society, specifically dealt with exploring the connections between universities and the military, the different educational opportunities they present students, and a reconciliation of those perspectives of campus.

Different than many of the other campus events featuring the military, Society and Service had only two of ten speakers explicitly address Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Instead, much of the conversation centered on the enriching experiences the military can provide students, and therefore ultimately why ROTC recruiting should be a part of campus life. While this sentiment was echoed by many of the speakers, and a portion of the conference was devoted to a panel discussion with current grad students who had previously served in the military, the event was not activist in nature. Rather, the purpose seemed to be the exploration of opinions not often voiced at Columbia for the sake of informing the current debate at large.