Prospects for a return of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps to Columbia University are at their strongest since the university’s board of trustees expelled ROTC from campus in the chaotic aftermath of student-led riots of 1968.

Last spring, at the prompting of an undergraduate student, the faculty senate governing body appointed a special task force to consider restoring Columbia’s relationship with ROTC. The task force is expected to make its recommendation to the full senate by the end of the academic year.

About 100 people weighed in on the debate last night at a town hall meeting held by the task force. The majority of students who spoke at the meeting, some from radical student organizations, said they opposed ROTC because of their general opposition to the American military and to the Bush administration. More commonly, students cited the federal government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” as a reason for barring the program. Some, however, defended the program as a way for Columbia to have more influence over the military or as an avenue for students to receive scholarship money.

The creation of the task force caused little stir on campus when it was announced last spring. And according to one poll conducted in 2003 by the college student council, a majority of students favor the return of a resident program. In May 1969, Columbia’s trustees voted to phase out the university’s Naval ROTC program, whose presence on campus infuriated students opposed to the Vietnam War. Months later, vandals destroyed the university’s ROTC office with a Molotov cocktail.

Though attitudes among the student body toward the military have long since mellowed – and have, to some degree, turned favorable since the September 11 attacks – it wasn’t until recently that the university began seriously to consider resurrecting a resident ROTC program.

While Columbia has no ROTC program on campus, a dozen Columbia students are enrolled in ROTC through a program at Fordham University in the Bronx, where training is conducted.

The issues being considered by the task force differ markedly from ones the trustees dealt with more than a generation ago. Student opposition to the American military, the thrust behind the trustees’ decision to eliminate ROTC in 1969, is a minor factor this time around.

“You have students who are far more positive about the military and its role in society,” the chairman of the task force James Applegate, an astronomy professor, said.

Despite the more favorable view of the military, students and faculty members tend to oppose the federal “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for homosexuals in the military, Mr. Applegate said.

The professor said his committee is examining whether Columbia is “willing to put away their opposition to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and accept ROTC on campus despite the fact.”

If the faculty senate voted to restore ROTC, Mr. Applegate said, the program would probably come without academic credit, and ROTC educators would receive the title of instructor rather than professor. Drill instruction would probably take place off campus.

The campaign to bring back ROTC to Columbia was spearheaded by an undergraduate, Sean Wilkes, who majors in neuroscience and serves as an ROTC cadet, having taken officer training courses through Fordham’s program. Mr. Wilkes, who wrote the proposal before the faculty senate, said restoring ROTC on campus would allow “the university to have an influence on the future military officers.”

“Columbia, as a prime source of national and international leaders, must include in its charge the education of those who are directly involved in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy,” he said.

The president of the Columbia Queer Alliance, Yi-Sheng Ng, said the gay and lesbian student group views the return of a resident ROTC program as a violation of the university’s nondiscrimination policy for campus recruiters.

“Columbia has a policy of not allowing employers on campus who discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Do we really want the ROTC to set a precedent for this?” he wrote in an email to student members of his group.

Efforts to bring back ROTC at Columbia and campuses with similar bans on resident programs have increased since the September 11 attacks. As the Wall Street Journal reported in December, the military, stretched thin in the war in Iraq, is pushing for the return of ROTC to elite schools as a way to attract more high caliber recruits.

Columbia is one of five Ivy League schools that eliminated ROTC during the student anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s.Today,of the eight Ivy League schools, only four – Princeton, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth – have resident programs.

Columbia ROTC students take courses in military science through Fordham’s Army ROTC program, which offers a maximum scholarship of $20,000 to cadets.