Members of a Columbia University student group made up of military veterans will meet today with the provost of the university, Alan Brinkley, to discuss the organization’s allegations of anti-military discrimination at the university.

“A lot of veterans and military-affiliated students feel vulnerable on campus,” a veteran who is a student at Columbia’s school of general studies, Oscar Escano, told The New York Sun. He described a “permissive atmosphere” in which anti-military bias and comments, mostly by other students, are prevalent university-wide.

Mr. Escano, a former Army specialist who served with the First Ranger Battalion in Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, said he discovered the extent of the anti-military bias at Columbia through a survey the military students group conducted of military-affiliated students, including veterans, reservists, servicemen’s dependents, and Columbia students who are members of other universities’ Reserve Officer Training Corps. Columbia banned the ROTC in 1969 amid anti-war protests on campus, making it one of six Ivy League schools to dismantle ROTC programs during the Vietnam War. Its students currently enroll in programs at Fordham University and Manhattan College. The university’s senate in May 2005 voted 51-11 not to bring the ROTC back to campus.

Mr. Escano declined to provide specific results from the survey because it was conducted with the assurance that its results would remain within the university. However, he said he found that “a surprising number of students that are veterans feel vulnerable, feel that their opinions are stifled, and feel that they cannot fully embrace their culture.”

In some incidents, he added, the discrimination went “just slightly beyond comments.”

He said other students were the source of the discrimination, but that many professors contributed to an atmosphere in which anti-military discrimination was permitted.

The group’s survey and subsequent talks with university administrators come in the wake of a controversy around another general studies student, Matthew Sanchez, who claims he was verbally attacked in September 2005 for being a member of the Marine Corps.

Mr. Sanchez, as first reported by a Columbia student, Chris Kulawick, in a January 18 opinion piece in the Columbia Spectator, says three Columbia students accosted him at the Military Society table at the university’s annual activities fair, calling him a “baby killer” and saying that, as a minority serviceman, Mr. Sanchez was “ignorant” and “stupid” for allowing himself to be used as “fodder” for an exploitative military.

“The accusations are a series of defamatory fabrications that serve to discredit the anti-war movement on campus,” one of the students, Monica Dols, wrote in a January 30 opinion piece in the Spectator. Another student, Zach Zill, acknowledged in a Spectator op-ed piece that he “confronted” three military recruiters but said he did not make the comments attributed to him.

Mr. Sanchez did not respond to requests for comment yesterday.

Today’s meeting will be the first step in a discussion of how to reduce the anti-military bias at Columbia, Mr. Escano told the Sun. He said that he would like to see the university’s administration take more responsibility for preventing anti-military discrimination, by amending and enforcing its discrimination and harassment policy – which, he said, presently limited protection to “Vietnam-era or disabled veterans” – and fostering an open dialogue about the military.

He said he was amazed at how little Columbia students, professors, and administrators knew about the military.

He said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the university’s response, adding that he had found officials to be very open to discussion in informal conversation about the issue.

The provost, Alan Brinkley, confirmed in an e-mail that a meeting was scheduled, though he declined to comment further.

A dean of the School of General Studies, Peter Awn, said there had been “lots of meetings” already and would be “many to come” before he hung up on a reporter.

A spokeswoman for the university, Susan Brown, said, “The two schools involved have clear and unambiguous policies that prohibit harassment and discrimination of any kind.”

She added, “We value the contribution that our students who serve or have served in the military make to our diverse intellectual community. We’re committed to ensuring that these students are treated with the same courtesy and respect that all of our students deserve.”

Ms. Brown added that some of the outrage stemmed from the confusing description of the university’s discrimination policy on its Web site. “We are reviewing the Web site’s description of existing procedures and policies to ensure that they are effectively communicated,” she said.