COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Student Privacy
City schools may restrict military recruiters
Joe Smydo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
August 13, 2007
Like
districts in other parts of the country, the Pittsburgh school board is
wrestling with the pros and cons of tightening restrictions on the
military recruiters who ply their trade in high schools.
New restrictions were proposed by board member Mark Brentley Sr., who
fears some students may be easy prey for heavy-handed recruiters
pressed to fill war-time quotas.
The proposals include limiting the number of visits by recruiters each
year, banning impromptu recruiting in hallways and standardizing the
new policy so that recruiters are treated the same in every high school.
The board discussed the proposals at Education Committee meetings July
10 and Tuesday, but still hasn't reached consensus on how tough the
policy should be.
In part, that's because the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires
that the military have the same access to high schools as other kinds
of recruiters, such as employers and college admissions
representatives. Board members don't want to tighten the screws on the
military at the risk of denying students jobs or college opportunities.
Depending on the details, the new policy could hurt college recruiting
efforts, said David Hawkins, spokesman for the National Association for
College Admission Counseling. He said he hasn't seen many schools kick
out recruiters altogether.
But there are other issues for the board to consider, such as how to
reconcile a crackdown on recruiters while permitting a Junior Reserve
Officer Training Corps program at Oliver High School on the North Side.
Patriotism also has factored into the discussion.
Amid tales of overzealous recruiters, such discussions have taken place
in school districts nationwide. Recruiters have been accused of
targeting students from low-income, minority or working-class schools;
of making false promises to prospective recruits; and of sneaking into
schools when they don't have permission to be there.
After considering an all-out ban on recruiting at high schools, the
Seattle school board approved a less stringent package of measures Aug.
1 limiting college, career and military representatives to two visits
per school per year.
Dale Terry, chief of advertising and public relations for the Army's
Pittsburgh Recruiting Battalion, said the controversy may be stirred
more by anti-war advocates than improper behavior by recruiters.
Two groups, Pittsburgh-based Conscience and the Philadelphia- based
American Friends Service Committee, have pushed the Pittsburgh board to
restrict recruiters' access here. One proponent last week circulated an
e-mail urging friends to start lobbying board members by phone and to
sign up to speak at the board's regular monthly hearing, scheduled for
7 p.m. today.
Jon Webb, a Conscience activist who has twin sons at Allderdice High
School in Squirrel Hill, said military recruiters frequently greet
students in the school cafeteria.
The school board seemed to agree on at least one point. If military
recruiters have their own room at Allderdice, as board member Theresa
Colaizzi and others have asserted, they should be evicted from it,
board members said.
Mr. Terry said military personnel do have rooms in some schools, but
noted the space may be used for JROTC or programs unrelated to
recruiting. If officials are upset, he said, "why not find out who gave
them that office?"
Douglas Smith, spokesman for Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.,
said recruiters want to be good guests in schools. As long as new
restrictions are applied to all types of recruiters, he said, the Army
probably won't have a problem with them.
So far, the board has discussed the possibility of limiting the number
of times per school year that a recruiter from any organization may
visit a school. Under that scenario, each branch of the military would
be treated as a separate organization.
The board has discussed the possibility of banning recruiting in
cafeterias and hallways, restricting the practice to places such as a
counselor's office. It's discussed a proposal to bar recruiters of all
types from serving as mentors, tutors or athletic coaches, unless they
are parents or guardians of students, fearing volunteer work can be
thinly veiled recruiting operations.
Members also discussed the possibility of establishing a process for
logging and investigating complaints about recruiters, of requiring
criminal background checks for recruiters and for banning military
recruiters from elementary and middle-grade buildings. Federal law does
not require that military recruiters have access to schools below the
ninth-grade level.
School board members Dan Romaniello and Floyd "Skip" McCrea balked at
the notion of keeping military recruiters out of the lower grades. Mr.
McCrea, a city firefighter, said he's attended career days in the
elementary grades and seen military personnel having a good time
explaining their work.
"That's recruiting," Ms. Colaizzi said at last month's meeting.
"That's not recruiting," Mr. McCrea replied.
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