MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (AP) – Marine Capt. David Doucette was allowed to bring his recruiting message to the Middlebury College campus, but not before answering questions about the military’s policy regarding gays and lesbians.

More than 150 Middlebury College students and faculty questioned Doucette about the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law in an hour-long session the college required before allowing the recruiter on campus.

The session featured a vigorous but respectful back-and-forth, with all but one comment from the overflow crowd directed against the military’s policy that forbids openly gay people from serving.

Middlebury spokesperson Phil Benoit said that the college’s nondiscrimination policy requires job recruiters to explain their reasons for what would normally be seen as a violation of that policy before being allowed to recruit on campus. He said military recruiters who had approached the college in the recent past had decided not to come after hearing that they first would have to explain the military’s policy on gays and lesbians.

“If you don’t tell me, and I don’t find out, you can join the military. There are members of the military right now who are gay, bisexual or lesbian,” Doucette, of Albany, N.Y., said of the military’s policy. He said discovery of a person’s sexual orientation as gay or lesbian likely would result in discharge.

Doucette came to campus for three days to recruit for the Platoon Leader’s Class, a military program that allows freshmen, sophomores and juniors to attend Officer Candidate School during the summer and then receive a commission upon graduation.

An explanation is good for one academic year, Jackman said. Benoit said the school’s rules were not directed at the military but affected no other organizations.

Doucette said he’s never encountered a requirement like Middlebury’s during his 11 years in the military, including recruiting trips to the University of Vermont in Burlington and St. Michael’s College in Colchester.

Steve Jasikoff, a 22-year-old senior from Ovid, N.Y., and a member of College Republicans, said he has considered a career in the military but has reservations about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Middlebury, he said, should welcome every group to campus wholeheartedly, even the military, and not subject a recruiter to such intense grilling.

Katie Harrold, 21, a junior from Newton, Mass., and co-president of the Middlebury Open Queer Alliance, said she’d rather the college prohibit any group that violates the campus anti-discrimination policy.

Doucette told the crowd that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which was enacted in 1993, is less strict than previous military rules on homosexuality. If people want to see the law changed further, he said, they should contact their legislators.

“If you have a problem with what I’m talking about tonight,” he said, “it’s your duty as a proud American to do something about it.”