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Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.

Maschek, who is studying economics, miraculously survived the insurgent attack in Kirkuk. In the hail of gunfire, he broke both legs and suffered wounds to his abdomen, arm and chest.

He enrolled last August at the Ivy League school, where an increasingly ugly battle is unfolding over the 42-year military ban there.

José Robledo, 30, a Columbia student who commutes to Fordham University for ROTC coursework, said he found the treatment of Maschek abhorrent.

"The anti-ROTC side has been disrespectful and loud. They hiss and they jeer," he said. "It's been to the detriment of the argument."

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i fear that many young people just don't get it.  whether or not you support the war, you should at least support and respect the men and women who are fighting it.  ALL of them fight not knowing whether or not they will make it home again.  they don't know if they will ever see thier friends, family, husbands/wifves again.  they don't know if they will ever hug thier children again, or hear those wonderful words agaain.."i love you daddy/mommy". and they do it voluntarily.  they do it because they think america is worth fighting for.  i believe that ANYONE who boo's and hisses at a hero is, as my son would say, "a waste of a human being"!  i believe in freedom of speech...beilieve me, i do.  but i also believe there is a time and place.  and this was nietthr!

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I agree.  The sheer unmitigated gall and arrogance of some people.     I have a theory that these kids grandparents (and their professors' parents) were the flower power Yippies that protested the Vietnam war.  Their values (or lack of them) have been passed down to the kids now.

The Chicago Seven, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, Francis Fox-Piven and other 60's radicals have poisoned our culture.  Their grandchildren are now in college here.  And their values simply must have had some effect on these kids.

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I don't think that right, either, but I don't agree with Dennis that the 60's radicals have poisoned our culture.  It's all a matter of one's personal perspective.  People on both sides of this issue (military recruiting on college campuses) are passionate about it, I'm sure.  I am actually in favor of a draft, if we are going to be fighting wars around the world. That way, everyone, rich or poor, has a better chance of serving, and we can't justify soldiers' deaths by saying, "They volunteered to serve.", etc.  Many countries have manditory service for 2 years after high school, & I think that's a good idea.