You, Too, Can Rein In Military Recruiters in the High Schools

You, Too, Can Rein In Military Recruiters in the High Schools

http://www.friendsjournal.org/you-too-can-rein-military-recruiters-high-school

by Nancy Howells & Judy Alves

In the spring of 2005, military recruiters had free rein in some of
the high schools of Lee County, Florida (which includes Fort Myers,
Cape Coral, and surrounding communities, with almost 80,000 students
in our public schools). Military recruiters from the Army, Marines,
Navy, and Air Force set up tables and exercise equipment in the
lunchrooms, courtyards, and hallways of schools, giving away tokens
of military life and signing up students for more information, for
special exercise and computer games based on military life, and for
free trips to the nearest military enlistment center in Tampa. Many
of the schools assigned a day a week to each branch of the military
for recruiting, and all the schools turned over home addresses and
phone numbers of students to the military so that they could contact
them at their leisure.

By coincidence, we had both retired from demanding jobs and moved to
the Fort Myers area a year or so before we started working against
recruiting in high schools. Nancy had recently retired as a professor
of Sociology from University of Toronto, and Judy retired from the
practice of law. With our own children grown up, an interest in
youth, and frustration over the occupation of Iraq, we both felt
called to the work of counter-recruitment.

Our starting point was a great weekend workshop put on by Oskar
Castro of American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. Nancy
had heard him speak at the 2005 Southeastern Yearly Meeting in
Leesburg, Florida. On invitation, Oskar came to Fort Myers Meeting a
few months later to work with a group of 12 members of the meeting,
plus seven local peace activists who wanted to hear what he had to
say. Oskar pointed out that it is easier to work in the public
schools as a secular group than as a project of a religious society,
and Fort Myers Meeting, where Nancy is a member, agreed to support
our efforts but not sponsor them.

We did not want to get bogged down in organizational issues; "Just do
it" has always been our motto. So we selected a name, "The Wage Peace
Project"; had some business cards printed up; and set out to learn
about how military recruiting is organized locally and what we could
do to apply what Oskar had taught us about counter-recruiting. We
share the title "co-chair," and we have no other officers or
committees. We personally have done 90 percent of the work of the
project, with help at busy times from an informal circle of a dozen
or so people willing to pitch in when needed. We called it a
"project" as an acknowledgment of what our neighbors in Palm Beach,
Florida, had done with their counter-recruiting group, "The Truth
Project." And we borrowed "wage peace" from AFSC, in large part
because we guessed that high school students would like to have those
popular rubber bracelets with Wage Peace printed on them that AFSC
distributes.

We thought it would be useful to have 501(C)(3) status, so we applied
to our local group, the Environmental and Peace Education Center, led
by Friend Phyllis Stanley and Bobbie Heinrich, to be adopted as its
project. The board of directors of EPEC accepted our proposal without
wishing to exercise tight control over our activities. They could not
provide funding for us, but we figured we would have tax-exempt
status later if we needed to do fundraising. (In fact, we haven't had
to do any as we followed a strategy of keeping our expenses low and
paying them ourselves.) We rented a mailbox from the local UPS store,
to avoid using our home addresses.

We started by attending the Lee County School Board meetings as
observers, and within a month we wrote to the superintendent of
schools to inform him that we were organized as an official
counter-recruiting group and that we intended to exercise our
court-given rights to have the same access to students as the schools
give to the military recruiters (see resources below).

The superintendent of schools delegated the issue of
counter-recruiting to the official school district attorney, who
studied the question for some weeks and then met with us. We were
informed that each school had its own policy set by its principal.
When we made appointments to talk with the individual principals, we
found that they were all unwilling to discuss their policy in detail
without guidance from the school district attorney, and in fact we
received a series of identically worded letters from principals,
suggesting that they were all guided by the attorney on their
responses. Eventually, the school board attorney met with us and
acknowledged what we already knew: that the federal circuit courts
had given permission for counter-recruiters to go into the schools,
to have equal access with the military, and to present the negative
side of military enlistment to the students. After he informed the
principals of his conclusion, the doors opened. We tried to be as
nonconfrontational as we could be, and we agreed to submit our
proposed literature to the attorney's office for review before
submitting it to the principals of schools.

We started with an AFSC brochure, Ten Points to Consider Before You
Sign an Enlistment Agreement, and we had to argue point by point and
word by word with the school board attorney. Eventually, however, he
"passed" the modified document and allowed us to append a sentence
saying, "This pamphlet has been modified from one produced by the
American Friends Service Committee. It has been reviewed and
determined to be legally permissible by the Lee County School Board
attorney for distribution in the high schools of Lee County." With
this clearance, the principals felt confident in allowing us to put
the pamphlet in their career counseling centers, to be distributed
next to the military recruiting literature.

By the time we got our first pamphlet approved, the school year of
2005–2006 was almost over. We met with each of the career counselors
at the 11 large high schools to let them know what we planned for the
next school year. It was clear that they would cooperate with us as
far as the principals authorized them to do so, and no further. In
five schools, we would match the military recruiters by setting up a
table in the courtyard or lunchroom and actively counter-recruit over
lunchtime one day each week. In four schools where the military
recruiters were restricted to the career counselor's office, we would
merely phone each week and only go when a student requested an
appointment with us. And in two schools we could only display
literature in the career counselor's office, because the military
recruiters were not allowed to actively recruit in those schools.

The routine during the 2006–2007 school year was to go to a school
around 10:30 AM and set up a table and a display board with a heading
like "The military is not just a job­it is eight years of your life."
When the first lunch bell rang, students poured out of classrooms
headed for some calories, and we offered a leaflet to the curious on
their way. Usually, serious conversations would not start until after
they had their food; then they would gather around our table, some
friendly, many curious, and a few belligerent. Students told us about
their fears for their brothers and sisters in the military; their
concerns about the plans of their boyfriends and girlfriends; and
their own plans for the future, in the military or outside of it.
Some told us that they were already in the military, by which they
meant that they had signed a Delayed Entry Program (DEP) contract,
promising to go to Basic Training as soon as they graduated. And
others told us about fighting off a steady barrage of phone calls and
letters from recruiters in the various branches of the military, even
though they had no interest in joining. Some of those who seemed to
be headed for enlistment appeared to be very mature and knowledgeable
about military careers, while others seemed to have little
information and understanding. Some were very interested in what we
had to say while others were unwilling to hear us express concerns
about the dangers and difficulties of military life for young people.

We provided information about pay, the terms of enlistment, and the
problems with the Montgomery G.I. Bill of Rights. We handed out a
range of pamphlets over the school year, such as Ask a Recruiter; You
Don't Have to Join the Military to Go to College; and Help Wanted, on
jobs locally available. Our single most powerful piece of literature,
one that we always try to have at our counter-recruiting table, is a
blank copy of the enlistment document, so that we can point out to
students exactly where it says in the Department of Defense
enlistment form that any promises made to them (including promises
made by recruiters) that are not explicitly written in this contract
are invalid and will not be honored; that the length of the term of
enlistment is eight years; and that the government is entitled to
change all the conditions of the contract at any time, while the
recruit is committed to every aspect of the contract, under penalty
of law and prison.

Our task for the summer of 2006 was trying to raise consciousness of
the right of parents to opt out of allowing the schools to turn over
home information about their child to the military for recruitment
purposes. Only 25 percent of the parents had located this box and
checked it during the 2005 school year (before we started). We
carried out a campaign by leafleting local fairs, and by writing
letters to the editors and guest opinion pieces in our local papers,
which resulted in a rate of opt-out of 46 percent in 2006, an
encouraging increase. During that school year we urged the school
district to revise the form so that parents would find it easier to
read and understand. They agreed, and improved it greatly, and in
2007 the percentage of parents who opted out in the 11 large schools
was 55 percent, a clear majority. We urge the school board to
interpret that as a vote by parents to restrict the recruiters in the
schools, too.

We tried various strategies, mimicking the military recruiters. We
gave away candy, cheap pins, and rubber bracelets. All the giveaways
were popular with students. We experimented with showing
counter-recruiting films in the public libraries after school, but
found that virtually no students came to see them (although we met
some nice adults who wandered in). We invested work and stamps to
send a mailing to parents in a high recruitment area where we could
not meet students in the lunchrooms (because the school had a policy
of only allowing recruiting in the career counselor's office, by
appointment), but we got no answers or signs of interest from
parents. Live and learn. However, some of our efforts were
unexpectedly successful. We put together a website and handed out
pencils with the web address printed on them, and got more than
100,000 hits in the month of December 2006.

Did we change anyone's mind about enlistment? We know that at our 11
large schools, of less than 3,000 graduating seniors, 55 announced
that they were going directly into the military in 2006, whereas 45
made the same statement in 2007. However, we hesitate to claim
success in reducing enlistments since during the time we were raising
consciousness about this issue, the war became increasingly unpopular
and fewer people supported the President's plan for the surge of
troops and the increased numbers of military abroad. We know only
that we talked with thousands of students, parents, and others about
the truth of military enlistment.

Throughout the 2006–2007 school year we regularly attended school
board meetings, and we often took the opportunity of the three-minute
public commentary period to remind the board and the community of our
interest in this issue, and what we were learning. At the end of the
school year, Nancy spoke about the varying policies in the 11 large
high schools, and a school board member questioned the difference in
the policies and asked the superintendent to look into it. At a
meeting of high school principals with the superintendent in July
2007, the decision was made to standardize the policy for all the
schools. From now on, military recruiters are restricted to
recruiting only in the guidance or career counseling office, and only
when a student requests an interview with a specific recruiter. Our
counter-recruiting literature will continue to be displayed and
available to students.

We are very pleased with this result. It means that students in the
middle schools and in the early years of high school will not
encounter military recruiters on school grounds, and that the older
students will only encounter them at their own request. We are
encouraged to find that our efforts were rewarded by attention and
consideration from the school district officials and the community.

Why did we succeed in a relatively short period of time? The law was
basically on our side, and the school authorities were committed to
following the law and respecting the parents' wishes when they could
do so. No doubt the fact that one of our co-chairs is a lawyer with
no fear of having to go to court to get the benefits promised in law
added greatly to our persuasiveness. We also made it easier for them
by being nonconfrontational, by agreeing that it would be
inappropriate for us to engage in criticism of the President and his
policies with students on school property. We expressed our respect
for veterans and troops whenever we could, and often mentioned that
the JROTC program is not a target of our work, as they are engaged in
leadership training and education about the military, not
recruitment. In the 2007-08 school year, the military has reduced its
activities in the schools of Lee County. They phone the students who
have not opted out, and try to get them to request appointments in
the Career Counseling office, but the volume of such appointments has
gone down. The Marine Corps attempted to recruit teachers and
counselors to help them influence students, and offered to pay for
trips to Parris Island and for catered lunches for teachers, but when
we asked the school board attorney about such gifts, a message went
out to all principals and counselors that the practice must be stopped.

Of course we haven't solved the problem. The war goes on, young
people go on killing and dying, and the brutality of the war
continues to harm their bodies, minds, and spirits. We would like to
do more, but the Spirit urges us to do what we can, and to share the
results of our efforts with others. We want to help when possible
with the similar struggles going on in other communities. We are sure
there are many communities where young people would benefit if the
military recruiters could be restrained to the limits of the law.
Feel free to contact us if we can help with your local efforts in any way.

The Legal Bases of Recruiting and Counter-recruiting in High Schools
All 18-year-old young men (not women) must voluntarily register for
the draft using a form (SSS Form 1M (UPO)) available at post offices
and on the Internet, despite the absence of a draft since 1973.
Failure to register disqualifies young men from government jobs and
university funds and loans. There is no opening to claim
conscientious objector status on the Selective Service registration
form so COs must keep a file documenting their objection to war in
their own papers. Dated documentation of discussions of war between
the young person and either clergy or a clearness committee is
usually the best way to establish CO status. COs do not have to be
members of Peace Churches, but it helps to establish the legitimacy
of the claim.

Schools must follow the No Child Left Behind Act; Section 85, which
states that schools must give the military services access to
students for recruiting purposes equal to that provided to recruiters
from universities, colleges, and employers. Military recruiters often
have far more access to students than required by law.

This law requires school boards to turn over directory information on
students in high schools­including name, address, phone, school
subjects, e-mail addresses, and other personal information­to each
branch of the military service that requests it, for contact at home
outside of school hours. Parents and students are permitted by NCLB
to opt out by signing a form available at the beginning of the school
year to deny access to directory information for that student.

Counter-recruiters are permitted in the public schools as a result of
a series of court cases. Military recruiting has been found by judges
to be a controversial issue in high schools, so the rights of those
presenting the other side to be heard are protected. The main cases are:
Clergy and Laity Concerned v. Chicago Board of Education (586 F.
Supp. 1408, 1984)
Searcy v. Harris (888 F. 2d 1314, 11th circuit 1989)
San Diego CARD v. Grossmont Union High School District (790 F.2d
1471, 9th Circuit 1986)
Boucher v. School Board of Greenfield (134 F.3rd 821, 7th Circuit, 1998)
Shanley v. NE Indiana School District (462 F.2d 960, 1972)
Atlanta Federal Appellate Case Guarantees Equal Access to Schools for
Military Critics (815 F.2d 1389 38 Ed.Law Rep.929, cite as 815 F.2d 1389)
Emory Searcey, et. Al, Plaintiffs – Appellee v. Alonzo Crim, et. Al,
Defendants-Appellants, United States of America,
Intervenor-Defendant, Appellee, No. 86-8681. US Court of Appeals,
Eleventh circuit, April 17, 1987
San Diego Federal Appellate case Guarantees Equal Access to Schools
for Military Critics (790 F.2d 1471, 55 USLW 2007, 32 Ed.Law Rep.
467, 12 Media L. Rep. 2329 (cite as 790 F.2d 1471) submitted March
11, 1985, decided June 6, 1986
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Nancy Howell, recording clerk of Fort Myers (Fla.) Meeting, is a
retired professor of Sociology. Judy Alves, a retired lawyer, is a
member of The Grail, an organization devoted to economic and social
justice for women around the world. They can be contacted at
wagepeacelee@yahoo.com.

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