COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Don't give military recruiters more chances to exploit vulnerable students
JOE COPELAND, SeattlePI
July 31, 2007
In the middle of a war that was re-escalated even as the publicwithdrew its support, the government needs all the new soldiers it
can find. The best bet: Get 'em while they're young and relatively uninformed.
Activists have targeted the Seattle Public Schools' policies for
allowing military and other recruiters on high school campuses. The
students with a group called Youth Against War and Racism are quite
frank about their motivation. Kristin Ebeling talks about wanting "to
cut the military off at its source."
Slowing the supply of troops for an out-of-control administration to
wage a wrongfully launched war is a good idea.
When the School Board votes on a new policy Wednesday, the young
people presumably won't get the strict controls they'd like. But they
have raised attention that moved the district toward a tighter, better policy.
The plan before the board from its Student Learning Committee is
reasonably good public policy. It would limit any organization to two
recruiting visits per year at any school. And officials say it will
define visits more clearly, so that military recruiters can't
constantly pop up as "volunteer" chaperones at proms and such. Those
changes will comply with the demands of federal law to allow military
recruiters equal access with others.
The Youth Against War and Racism would go further, proposing a policy
that looks perfectly workable and apparently meets the federal
requirements. The group would have the district ban all in-school
recruiting and instead set up twice-a-year, districtwide fairs for
college, military and job recruitment.
If poor and minority students continue to be targeted by the
military, the district certainly ought to reconsider the districtwide
fairs. It was, however, hard enough to get board action this year.
Board member Brita Butler-Wall played a key role, but she is leaving
at the end of the year. Questions about the recruiters' solicitation
of students struck home with Butler-Wall, who got involved with
schools over advertising to students and commercialization of
education (hence the enduring antipathy toward her from some in the
business community, who have little idea how she will be missed). As
she said, investigative reports clearly have shown that military
recruiters sometimes do cross lines of honesty and fairness.
The new policy, Butler-Wall said in a phone interview, will give the
district new information about recruiting. Besides having the option
of reviewing its policies, the district could lean on colleges to be
more equitable in what schools they visit.
The Boston Globe reported in 2004 that the military has become quite
sophisticated about those most likely to sign up. They are often
poorer minority students. And the new limits will still mean that,
for instance, Franklin High School students could see far more visits
by military recruiters than by universities. There could be two
visits apiece from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard
and, according to the activists, the various reserve and guard branches.
The targeted recruiting ought to worry a district that is constantly
proclaiming its concerns about disproportional outcomes. You can't
get much more inequitable than having students at some schools be
recruited for private, out-of-state colleges while other high
schools' students repeatedly are offered chances to serve as targets
in the middle of another country's civil war.
Butler-Wall has expressed understandable hesitance about cutting off
students' opportunities to learn about colleges. But the district
also ought to note that recruitment is, if anything, becoming more
high-stakes for the military. The Army Times reported last week that
the Army, facing shortfalls in enlistments, is urgently reassigning
more than 1,100 recruiters back to their old jobs for more than two
months. The recruiters can earn a $2,000 bonus for every applicant
who completes initial training. As much as one may trust the
integrity of most recruiters, that's a big temptation to care more
about making the sale than about how the sale is made.
Maybe the district's new plan will prove an improvement. But the
board is under no obligation to go any further than required to
maintain an open door to shipping out its students for use overseas
by the Bush administration, whose only known hesitance about an
endless re-escalation in Iraq is the ability of its limited number of
troops to sustain the so-called surge.
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