COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Student Privacy
Parents Challenge Request By Army
Michael Alison Chandler, Washington Post
May 28, 2007
The
Army has asked Loudoun County public schools to distribute a survey to
help identify students interested in the military, a proposal some
parents contend would give the armed service an unfair recruiting edge
over colleges and other career paths.
The brief survey, submitted to the School Board this spring by a
Sterling-based recruiter, would ask students for contact information
and whether they would like to learn more about the Army or Army
Reserve.
Federal law requires public schools to provide contact information to
the military for every high school junior and senior, unless parents
choose to block the information. The law also calls for military
recruiters to have the same access to students as college and career
recruiters.
But some parents argue that the military, under pressure to sustain
troop deployments in Iraq, is going too far in its quest to recruit
students. Amid debate over the war, more parents across the country are
asking school officials to clarify the federal law through local
policies that create clear limits on military recruitment on campus.
Michelle Grise, a Leesburg mother, has formed a parents group to
scrutinize school recruiting. She said the military should not get
preferential treatment.
"We don't allow colleges and other businesses who are recruiting to come in and pass out these surveys," Grise said.
Her group wants to reduce the number of visits military recruiters can
make to high school campuses and to confine their meetings to a career
center. The group also seeks to have opt-out forms placed prominently
in the student handbook. Currently, parents who wish to opt out must
write a letter requesting that their children's names not be released
to the military, following instructions on Page 23 of the handbook.
This year, 54 families have sent in letters requesting that their
children's names be withheld from the military, and a few parents have
called the schools with concerns about recruiting, said Loudoun schools
spokesman Wayde B. Byard.
"This has not been a major concern that parents express," he said.
Parents in other parts of the Washington area have been more vocal
about recruiting. In Montgomery County, parents have lobbied the school
board to limit military recruiting activities and have achieved some
changes. In Montgomery, opt-out forms are sent home in multiple
languages. Some Prince George's County parents have raised concerns
about military recruiting within the past year, but a spokesman for
that school system said that the county does not have an opt-out form
and that there have been no recent policy changes.
Fairfax and Arlington county schools have opt-out forms, and Arlington
requires military recruiters to meet with students in the same location
as other recruiters.
None of those school systems distributes surveys for the military,
officials said. Matthew Fullerton, a spokesman for the Army's Baltimore
Recruiting Battalion, said such surveys are not common.
Army Staff Sgt. Robert L. Trujillo, who proposed the four-question
survey, wrote in a letter that he was asking the Loudoun school system
for assistance.
"I understand that the Army is not for everyone and I have no desire to
call your students [at] home time after time only to get an answering
machine," Trujillo wrote. "This is not only time consuming, but it is
also frustrating for everyone involved."
Trujillo was not allowed to answer a reporter's questions about the
issue, another recruiter who answered the telephone at the Sterling
office said.
In a legislative policy meeting in late April, School Board members
said they would consider only a survey that covers all branches of the
military. They invited the recruiter to submit to the board a
"consensus proposal."
Board member Mark J. Nuzzaco (Catoctin) said that his priority is to
comply with federal law and that he is not opposed to giving students
the chance "to hear about career and educational opportunities that are
available through military service."
Donald Eaves, a Loudoun parent, told the School Board that he would he
like to see more resources devoted to teaching children about the
"realities of war," including physical and psychological risks. He said
that would help students "make an informed and responsible decision
that will affect the rest of their lives."
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
This archive consists of a topically organized selection of
articles culled by members of the Counter-Recruitment List Serve from printed
publications and web sites. The archive is not complete. We have chosen
material relevant to the work of