COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: General
New law makes sure universities remain open to military recruiters
Bryan Kirk, Sun-News reporter
June 4, 2007
LAS CRUCES A bill that takes effect June 15 will make New Mexico's
college campuses a bit more welcoming to military recruiters.
Senate Bill 566, authored by Sen. Rod Adair, R-Roswell, requires that
university and college campuses allow on-campus recruitment
opportunities for the U.S. military.
While there have been no instances of a university prohibiting
military recruiters on New Mexico campuses, Adair said it is still
necessary to have that protection written into the law.
"I've just seen trends around the country where faculty ... people
like Ward Churchill, other people, will get into an institution and
create an irrational and emotional atmosphere and suddenly propose
that ROTC be banned, or that recruiters not be allowed on campus,"
Adair said. "I think those kinds of things are injurious to the
country at large."
The argument to bar military recruiters from some college campuses is
not a new one. The practice became somewhat common during the Vietnam
era as a form of protest.
However, the most recent push to ban military recruiters doesn't stem
so much from the war in Iraq as it does from the policy of "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell." A host of universities throughout the U.S.,
including Yale and Harvard Law School, enacted a ban in 1994 against
military recruiters.
In a brief to legislators, Tanya Garcia, from the New Mexico Higher
Education Department, wrote that military recruiters were not
restricted on the campuses of New Mexico State University, the
University of New Mexico, nor any other institution of higher learning.
"An administrator of the New Mexico Association of Independent
Community Colleges stated that, while policies may vary from one
public college to the next, no institution bars military recruiters
from their campuses," Garcia wrote.
Garcia added that all state universities and colleges maintain an
open-door policy for all recruiters.
However, Adair said while recruiters may not have ever been barred
here, there were still reasons to be concerned.
Adair declined to name any particular college or university, but said
there were indications that this could have become a problem had it
not been for the passage of this bill into law.
"There is always the danger and we have to be vigilant. I've seen,
not enough to be overtly alarmed, but enough to be fore warned," he said.
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