COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Student Privacy
Military test issue questions privacy
Dakarai I. Aarons, commercialappeal. com
February 11, 2007
A
recent proposal from the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center resulted in
Memphis school board members and staff getting a crash course on
military recruiting and student privacy.
The organization told the Memphis Board of Education that the way
Memphis City Schools administers a test the armed forces uses to
recruit students has left students and their parents open to loss of
privacy and harassment by recruiters.
They asked the board to make it mandatory that the Armed Services
Vocational Aptitude Battery would be given only under a format that
would prohibit the district from giving student test information to
recruiters.
The ASVAB, created during the height of the Vietnam War, is an aptitude
test used in part by the military to determine if people qualify to
join the armed services.
Board member Jeff Warren, who sponsored the resolution, said his concern is solely about protecting student information.
"If we are going to tell TV stations they can't have student data
because we are protecting student privacy, we should be able to tell
any other entity that is not directly involved in education they can't
have that information also," he said.
Board members will take up the issue again at a board-staff conference Monday.
Tensions ran high at the board meeting last Monday, when the resolution was up for a vote.
J.B. Smiley, the local ASVAB administrator, said then the resolution
was the effort of "an anti-military group" that was designed to stifle
student access to military training and scholarships.
Jacob Flowers, the group's director, said the resolution is about
student privacy, and not about the current national debate over the war
in Iraq, as some critics have suggested.
"We really just want to address this whole idea that the military is
trying to push that we are an anti-military group. Nothing is further
from the truth," he said.
"We would just ask the board to hopefully look past all the propaganda
they have been receiving and look at the issue of student privacy and
it should make this easy."
Federal law generally prohibits educational institutions from sharing
student information without their prior consent. But some laws,
including the federal No Child Left Behind Law Act, require school
districts to provide military recruiters the same access to student
information given to colleges and universities.
Board members have been flooded with e-mails from people on both sides
of the issue. Most members find themselves still undecided.
Several board members expressed concerns that their decision will be construed as voting for or against certain groups.
"I'm not going to support taking sides for the Department of Defense or
the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center," said member Wanda Halbert. "
I'm going to support what is best for every child."
Board member Stephanie Gatewood, who is opposed to the resolution, said
her family has benefited from the military, and she wants to keep the
access widespread to give others the same chance.
"It provides a way or life for students who wouldn't otherwise have an
opportunity. I know that ethically we cannot rob them of that."
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