Lots of response to my VMI post, including this (from a Harvard alum, I’m guessing from the rest of his e-mail):

I get your overall sentiment. I wouldn’t want your average Harvard graduate in my foxhole, either. However, the Harvard graduates who do serve in the military are not your average Harvard graduates. They have faced and overcome a campus culture that so reviles their service that it banned ROTC to MIT. I would expect that the grit developed through four years of traversing the Yard in a cadet uniform would come in handy in a shooting war.

Good point — no amount of military-school hazing or even life-fire exercises could better train a soldier for combat than strolling in uniform through an Ivy League campus.