COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Counter-Recruitment: General
Parents, veterans protest military recruitment
Audrey Dutton, The Gazette
Sept 19, 2007
The
three R’s don’t include recruiting, read one
picketer’s sign during a demonstration Tuesday at Winston
Churchill High School, where a couple dozen veterans and parents
protested military recruitment in Montgomery County Public Schools.
Picketers handed pamphlets to bleary-eyed students on their way to
school. Demonstrators argued that military recruiters have gotten too
much access to high schools. At Churchill in Potomac, the event was
mostly symbolic.
‘‘I haven’t heard of any military recruitment,”
said Sarah Gutkind, a Churchill senior who plans to attend college. She
said the military was ‘‘not really” an option she was
considering.
‘‘The audience at this location is not the kids ....
They’re going to Brown and Cornell,” said Pat Elder,
protest co-organizer and father of two Montgomery County Public Schools
students. Elder said protesters had three audiences: the U.S. military,
the school system and students.
‘‘It’s not like we’re going to stop [Churchill
students] from going into the military to go to college,” Elder
said. ‘‘They’re going to college anyway.”
Protestors agreed that Churchill’s college-bound demographic may
be less inclined to join the military than at other schools around the
country, where recruiters have been accused of targeting low-income
students.
Only one-sixth of a percent of Churchill students planned to enter the military after graduation in 2006, according to MCPS.
But protesters were against recruiters getting what Elder said was
excessive access to all schools, including Churchill. As Elder talked,
he pulled out a photocopy of a postcard he said an Army recruiter
mailed to at least one Churchill student.
The postcard was addressed to ‘‘A FUTURE SOLDIER,”
who was invited to call or e-mail Michael Boyle, a U.S. Army recruiter.
According to the postcard, Boyle planned to be at Churchill at 1 p.m.
Tuesday.
Calls to Boyle and Churchill administrators were not returned Tuesday afternoon by The Gazette deadline.
Elder said the postcard was ‘‘an escalation of recruiting
tactics.” He argued that although college recruiters are already
courting seniors at Churchill, those recruiters are not looking for
soldiers who could be killed in combat.
One protester in a buzz cut and a beard stood on a corner, greeting
students as they arrived on campus. He had served a tour in Fallujah
and recently left the U.S. Marine Corps.
Adam Kokesh, of Washington, said he became an anti-war activist when he
decided that ‘‘the war is bad for America.”
Kokesh said he wasn’t actively recruited during high school.
‘‘I had college paid for, so that wasn’t an issue for
me,” Kokesh said. ‘‘I wanted to serve out of
patriotism.”
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