COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Student Privacy
Military Faces Parental Counterattack
Lori Aratani, Washington Post Staff
November 1, 2005
For as long as Principal Alan Goodwin can recall, military
recruiters -- in their crisp, carefully pressed uniforms -- have
stoppedby Walt Whitman High School to chat with students about the benefits of
a career in the armed forces. They set up tables, greeted students with
a firm handshake and passed out glossy brochures.
But a visit this fall to the Bethesda school by recruiters had
parents firing off frantic missives on the school listserv. They
demanded to know exactly what recruiters were doing on campus and why
the parents had not been told in advance. Goodwin was puzzled.
Recruiters "have been allowed on campus for as long as I can remember,"
Goodwin said. "But maybe people are more sensitive about it now
because of the war."
In past years, parents at Whitman and other high schools across
the country may have paid scant attention to calls from military
recruiters, but as the war in Iraq continues and the number of
casualties grows, parents seem to be growing increasingly sensitive.
Now many parents -- aided by such anti-recruiting groups as the
San Francisco-based Leave My Child Alone -- are demanding that school
boards make it easier for families to prevent military recruiters from
contacting their sons and daughters. They are mounting e-mail and
letter-writing campaigns telling families they can block school systems
from releasing student information to military recruiters. Even such
national educational groups as the PTA are getting involved in the
effort to get the word out.
But the military is spreading its own word -- about the benefits
of a career in the armed services. This month, the Pentagon launched a
$10 million marketing campaign aimed at encouraging parents to be more
open to allowing their children to enlist. Although officials say the
effort is not tied to growing antiwar sentiment, the commercials
featurekids broaching the topic of enlistment with apprehensive parents and
urge mothers and fathers to make it a "two-way conversation."
Many states have long allowed military recruiters access to
student phone numbers and addresses, but the practice received a boost
from the federal No Child Left Behind act. School systems that decline
to release the information now risk losing federal dollars.
The advocacy is putting school officials in a quandary,
particularly principals who say they want to be responsive to parents
but also want to be fair to military recruiters, who by law are allowed
the same access to student information as college recruiters. And,
principals point out, although some parents wish to prevent military
recruiters from reaching their children, others view military service
as a good option.
"m just trying to follow the rules -- and the rules are the
same for everyone,'' said James Fernandez, principal at Albert Einstein
High School in Kensington, where recruiters have visited four or five
times this year. Last year, five students from the school enlisted in
the armed forces.
Principals also know that they must act quickly to address
parent concerns. As soon as Goodwin learned that parents were upset, he
fired off an e-mail explaining that military recruiters -- like college
recruiters -- must make an appointment with the school's career center
before coming to campus. He told the parents that recruiters are
allowedto set up a table and talk to students, just as they have done in the
past. To ease concerns, however, he said the school's career center
willgive parents advance notice of recruiter visits.
Some parents and organizations have criticized schools for not
doing a better job of publicizing opt-out policies, which give parents
the chance to restrict the release of student information. Many school
officials, however, said they thought parents already knew they had
this
right.
In the District, Maryland and Virginia, as well as Illinois and
California, recruiters have long had access to student information. Lt.
Col. Ellen Krenke, a spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, noted
that for many years, the vast majority of public schools -- 88 percent
-- have allowed recruiters access to student phone numbers and
addresses.
Still, these are different times. With the Army having difficulty
meeting recruiting goals and rumors about a draft continuing to
circulate on the Internet, people are anxious.
"There is some angst,'' said Pat O'Neill, president of the
Montgomery County School Board. "I think it's fallout from a
not-favorable position to the war in Iraq." Montgomery schools recently
gave parents the option of withholding their children's information
frommilitary recruiters on the student privacy forms they distribute each
year -- something schools in Fairfax County also have done.
Parents in Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties last month asked
their school boards to better publicize military opt-out choices for
parents.
The National PTA also is pushing for change. It wants the law
rewritten so that students would have to sign a form saying they want
their information released to the military, said spokesman James
Martinez.
"We don't have anything against what the military is trying to
do," he said. "We're just concerned about student privacy."
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill that would
rewrite the law so that families have to opt in rather than opt out of
having their child's information released.
Jerome Brocks, a parent in the D.C. public school system, said
he wants more than better information about opt-out forms. He would
likethe military to be kept away from students, period. Last year, when his
daughter was a senior, he said, he grew alarmed by how aggressively
recruiters behaved. Brocks said recruiters called his home and asked to
speak to his daughter more than a dozen times.
"I just don't think the military should have a place in our
schools,'' he said. For their part, recruiters say they realize that parents have
the right to remove their children's names from recruiting lists but
are not certain what impact the opt-out campaigns will have on their
efforts.
"Naturally, we'd like to speak to as many young people as possible to
start a conversation about what the Army has to offer,'' said Douglas
Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Kentucky.
"It's up to the schools to notify the parents of their options.''
In Montgomery County, Pat Elder, a parent at Walt Whitman, was
among those who successfully lobbied the school system to change its
student privacy forms to offer parents the option of restricting the
release of student information to the military.But Elder thinks school
officials can do even more. He and otherparents also are pushing for
more consistent systemwide policies for
howmilitary recruiters operate on campuses.
" We need to put together systemwide regulations and go after
area-wide and nationwide regulations," Elder said. "This issue
resonates
among parents, not just those who are antiwar, but those who are
concerned about their children's privacy."
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