Military recruiting piques board's interest
The school board plans to discuss military recruitment of high school students next week after parents representing a local advocacy group asked to be put on the agenda. Their concerns: parents and students aren't getting a balanced picture of military life by recruiters and many don't know about their option to opt-out of contacts lists used by recruiters.
Richard and Sandra Koritz, founders of Parents and Citizens for Truth in Recruiting, sent an e-mail to board members in May, requesting the following:
* We are asking the board, at a minimum, to send a mailing to the parents of all students who are rising juniors and seniors in high school, clearly informing them of their right to take their name off the list and the procedure for doing so.
* We also ask the board to consider informing juniors and seniors of their right to opt out through flyers on bulletin boards at school, announcements and any other methods deemed appropriate.
* In addition, we request that this information and opt-out forms also be made available online.
* Finally, we request your support in allowing our group and other like-minded citizens to coordinate visits to schools to provide opt-out forms to juniors and seniors, and/or truth in recruitment literature, so as to help provide our youth with a balanced picture of a potential military career, at this moment in our history.
What do you think of this group's proposals? Are they necessary?
The group is a month-old and has about 30 participants, Richard Koritz said. Their interest was sparked after they heard about Terri Johnson, a Smith High School graduate who went AWOL from the U.S. Army Reserves last year after she learned she would be deployed to Iraq. Johnson said a recruiter told her she could avoid deployment.
I was unable to include a few people I identified in the story. One of them was board member Nancy Routh, who serves on the governance review committee, said she was trying to get information on what the district provides in recruitment education. Currently, parents can find out about the opt-out provision in the student handbook (p. 71). Routh said she didn't know if the board could require counter-recruiting efforts in high schools.
"I would need lots more advice on that from a legal standpoint," Routh said. "How much we could do with that is another thing."
I also interviewed Lyn Meza, a friend of the Koritzes and coordinator of an anti-war group in Chelsea, Mass., that has been successful in shrinking the student contact lists at its local high school. As I understand it, that part of the country has a stronger anti-war sentiment than North Carolina.
"I think the popular opinion in the United States today is that the U.S. should not be in Iraq," said Meza, coordinator of Chelsea Uniting Against the War. "It's getting very difficult for the military to meet their recruiting goals. Consequently they are getting more desperate."
I interviewed recruiting officials with the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army and N.C. National Guard, who conceded that the war has discouraged some people from enlisting. The Army, for example, has seen the number of regular Army high school enlistees drop from a high of 590 in 2000 over the past seven years to 377 in 2006 (the number of total enlistees has fluctuated). But officials with those three branches said they are making recruiting goals (with 99% of National Guard recruits completing basic training this year).
They also say allegations of wrongdoing/unethical behavior are very low. The U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion in Raleigh investigated 12 allegations of recruiter impropriety in fiscal year 2006 (one involved the Greensboro recruiting station). One allegation was substantiated in the battalion, none in Greensboro, according to spokesman Robert Harrison. For fiscal year 2007 to date, the battalion received 10 allegations with none in Greensboro.