The military is trying to reach as many kids as it can, but some activists are fighting back with their own message.
Liam Bartels is a busy high school senior. Tall with bushy red hair, he takes chemistry, history and welding at Santa Fe High School, along with engineering classes at Santa Fe Community College. He's on the high school's swim team and the city's hockey team. He sings in a choir and plays the cello in the Santa Fe Youth Symphony. He also has had contact with the US military at least four times in three years at the high school. "In my welding class the Navy brought in their Nascar or something," Bartels says. "They revved the engine so much I couldn't get anything done." The Navy also has been to his chemistry class twice to tell students about nuclear reactors aboard many of the Navy's ships. During his sophomore year, the Army brought a rock-climbing wall to his school. "If you wrote down your name and contact information you could go climb," Bartels says.
From classrooms to teen conferences to toy stores, the military has stepped up its drive to talk to potential enlistees. In August, the Army began offering enlistment
bonuses to a wide variety of recruits-an $8,000 cash bonus if the recruit has a four-year degree, $7,000 for a two-year or associate degree. People with civilian skills applicable to the military receive a $3,000 bonus.
The increased recruitment effort reflects concerns about inadequate troop numbers. But unlike some forms of recruitment, school contact by the military has happened a bit under the radar. While many realize The No Child Left Behind Act changed testing standards for schools, not everyone realizes it also made it easier for the military to gain access to student information. This has raised concerns from parents to anti-war activists to the students themselves. At Santa Fe High School, students interviewed by SFR say they've regularly seen the Army on campus. "There was this giant Army bus that parked out front of the school," SFHS Senior Kelly McReynolds recounts. "They had a 10-minute commercial called Desert Storm or something, talking about an Army of One. We just wanted to see how creepy it was."
As far as the military having access to her name, McReynolds feels that her privacy has been violated. "I don't think I should have to write to not be on the list," she says. "I should have to write to be on the contact list."
That's not how the law works.
The No Child Left Behind Act was President Bush's major
domestic achievement of his first administration. Passed in 2002, it forced states, through a variety of means, to develop achievement standards and then give standardized tests to mark progress.
Buried within the act is language that requires any school that receives federal money under the act to provide high school juniors' and seniors' contact information to military recruiters, if requested. It also ties military recruiting to college recruiting; anytime a
college is invited, the military, under the law, also is allowed to attend. US high school principals received a letter in 2002 that explained these new obligations-the letter was signed by former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. DOD spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke says the military was experiencing challenges in recruiting, so they pushed to further open up students' contact information to recruiters.
Doug Smith, an Army recruitment spokesman, said that the main purpose was to make recruiters' lives easier. Without lists from schools, recruiters "might have to use a school yearbook to come up with names, figuring out who would be juniors and seniors."
Before the new law, public schools could and had argued that students' contact information was protected under the Family Education Rights Privacy Act. A local school board could, with a majority vote, deny military recruiters student contact information. After NCLB was passed, David Chu, the US undersecretary of defense, sent letters to state education officials around the country to inform them that the new act overrode FERPA.
School officials say allowing military on campus is no different than allowing any other recruiter access to students. "We've always given permission to certain advertisers, like
for senior pictures, class rings," Susan Lumley, Santa Fe High School principal, says. "Companies want lists, so do colleges and the military. It's the individual's decision. We give no undo influence."
Ruthanne Greeley, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Public Schools, agrees. "We follow the law as required, we do what we have to do, the military is a valid career choice," she says.
As for parents, they have the option under the bill to sign a waiver, annually, that prevents recruiters from getting their children's names. Nonetheless, some believe the very nature of public schools has been changed. "They have combined the Department of Defense with the Department of Education, I've never been more scared for these kids," Frieda Arth says. Arth is a member of the New Mexico Women's Foundation and has six children and nine grandchildren. Her conviction on the subject is so strong, she pulled her organization's support of an annual teen conference this year when it turned out the military would be there.
In April, 2005, the State will put on a conference to acknowledge
it's the Year of the Girl, an effort created by the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women. Initially, the Santa Fe-based New Mexico Women's Foundation was to act as the conference's fiscal agent. Frieda Arth was the organization's liason.
The Commission planned to have roundtable exhibits, where different companies would rent tables showing the girls opportunities in health care, education, the legal profession-and the
military. That's when the trouble started.
"When they first announced that they were going to rent tables and exhibit booths to the military, I asked them not to do that," Arth says.
The issue created significant disagreement and "a long discussion," according to Mary Molina Mescall, executive director of the New Mexico Commission on the Status of Women. Subsequently, surveys were sent to 6,000 teenage girls. Of the 1,200 returned, the military was ranked as the fourth most interesting topic.
"We will follow the percentages," Mescall says, although the group agreed recruiters would not be given access to the girls' contact information. In response, NMFW pulled out of the conference. "I just think it is abominable that you need to rent to any organization that can do harm to your children, overtly do harm to your children." Arth believes that part of the reason girls respond so favorably to the military is that recruiters have done a good job convincing the public that an easy way to get funding for college is through the military.
The New Mexico Teen Pregnancy Coalition will be the fiscal agent for the conference. Mescall says they also are waiting to hear back from corporations like Coca-Cola for
financial support. "I'm a bit disappointed in Frieda's
position, I don't think it's supportive of girls," Mescall says. "She's got a position on the military no one should be comfortable with. The military is an honorable profession." As far as Arth is concerned, "If you can rent to the military you may as well be renting to Philip Morris, Budweiser and all of these other things that children think they need."
Which may help explain why local recruiters have set up shop in a place where they are bound to see kids-the Villa Linda Mall.
The mall is home to Army, Navy and Marines recruitment
offices-all decorated with images of fast planes, fast ships and powerful weapons. Recruiters spring out from behind their desks
whenever a future soldier walks through the door. They have to engage people aggressively-their product isn't always an easy sell. That's why they start young. "We try to contact ages here and up," says Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Love, 31, as he puts his hand next to his knee and slowly raises it. Last month, the
Army attended the Marine-sponsored Toys for Tots program at the Toys R' Us outside of the Villa Linda Mall. "We give out T-shirts and toys to kids," Love says.
The Army National Guard's Staff Sgt. Nicholas Salazar says the Guard regularly goes to Española and elementary schools in Pecos, but activity in Santa Fe is a little slower. "We don't get invited to middle schools in Santa Fe, people don't like recruiters here," he says, although he still contacts most schools several times a week.
Despite the aggressive recruitment, numbers in northern New Mexico decreased in the 2004 fiscal year: 321 Army enlistees compared with 513 the previous year.
When recruiting, the Guard touts the fact that it is more flexible than the more active branches of the
military. "There are lots of educational benefits, especially with the Guard," Salazar says.
"We can give kids job skills that don't want to be in active duty."
For high school students, recruiters admit their best argument is college money. "You can get $70,000 for college after you get out, plus while you are in college the Army
will pay it for you," Love says. He's a product of his own pitch-he's almost completed his four-year degree. The Army has paid for all of it.
Despite the benefits, some believe the military provides too much
pressure on today's students to join up. "They are huge programs," says Janice Hart of the Alliance for Academic Freedom. "There's intense pressure to join. A typical student has 50 to 60 contacts with ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps] before they graduate."
Santa Fe High boasts a popular Navy Junior ROTC program. "We have about 70 students this semester," retired Lt.
Cmdr. Robert Hornak says. He directs the program and stresses that: "We are not recruiters. The Navy pays half our salary and the district pays the other half. Our program is elective, the kids choose to do it, like PE or welding."
Within the 70 are 12 kids that come over from Capital High School. "Our main purpose is teaching self-discipline, self-confidence, leadership, teamwork, being responsible citizens. We sponsor needy families at Thanksgiving and buy gifts at Christmas, bell ring for the Salvation Army, we helped with Get Out the Vote." Hornak says.
Hart, whose group was formed after a Rio Rancho teacher was fired over a discussion with students about the Iraq war, believes ROTC programs entice students by having guns. (Hornak confirms that the ROTC program has unusable guns that the kids carry in parades.) "There's a John Wayne misconception," Hart says. "Kids always say, 'we joined up to pay for college, I didn't think we'd go to war.' They have an unrealistic view of this."
Shelley Buonaiuto, mother of three kids-one a 16-year-old daughter who Buonaiuto pulled out of SFHS a year ago-says today's children don't understand what they are facing because they've never lived through military action to this extent. With the military in the schools and the possibility of the draft looming, "The enormity of what kids face is terrifying. It's a reality they've never faced before, and how many are even aware of it?"
To respond to this issue, the Santa Fe chapter of Veterans for Peace is planning a new program they want to bring to the schools called Full Disclosure. "Young people are making irrevocable decisions," Ken Mayers, a member of the group and retired US Marine career officer, says. After several decades, Mayers still stands as straight as a Marine. He spent three high school summers at a naval academy and had a great time. But he's cautionary. "They are not getting the whole story," he says. "We are not going to tell them not to join the military, we'll just fill out the story. When you buy medicine at the drugstore, there's an information packet that explains the side effects of the drug. When you go to the grocery store, there's nutritional information on breakfast cereals. We're saying joining the military is at least as important as buying breakfast cereal."
One topic they'd like to address is the so-called educational benefits of joining the military. "I'm the poster child," says Mayers. The military paid his way through Princeton. But
those days have changed, he says, citing studies of veterans done both by Hampshire College and Department of Veterans Affairs. "Two-thirds never get college funding, and only 12 percent of vets said that their armed service had translated into a usable trade outside of the service." Mayers also points out that in World War II, college money from the military could pay for school at 90 percent of schools, but that's not the case anymore given the huge increase in tuition at private and most public schools. Servicemen also pay in $1,200 into the Montgomery GI Bill, which is one of the education fund bills the military has. "Only 35 percent ever see a dime in return. Sitting in a library looking through scholarship listings doesn't sound like fun, but it's better than waking up at 5 am to scrub floors."
To make their points, Veterans for Peace wants the same access to students as the recruiters have. They have approached the district and hope to launch their program in January. "If you take together recruiting and the violence on TV and the violence on computer games, it adds up to a corrosive influence," Mayers says.
Santa Fe High School Principal Lumley says the group "will be treated like any other group that wants to speak with students."
However, she says she is concerned that the groups don't offer any alternatives. "If they are just there to say the military is bad, I'm against that."
The group is one of several nascent outreaches to the city's youth. Frieda Arth is planning a rally outside the state Capitol building in a few months to jumpstart a citywide conversation. "Nobody ever talks about this," Arth says. "Let's at least give young people a chance to do a lot of things."
The Quaker group Santa Fe Friends, has begun monthly meetings at Warehouse 21. The lead advocate, Howard Shulman, was an objector during the Vietnam War, and says kids don't know enough about their other options should the draft reoccur. With another major terrorist strike, Shulman believes the draft will be reinstated. "We want to create a peer-based support system that puts out accurate information to draft-aged youth so they can create their own support system," says Shulman. "We'll go to Native Americans, Hispanics, churches and schools. We mean to calm people so they make rational decisions."
After all, by this week 1,217 American soldiers had died in Iraq. The stakes, activists say, are
too high for children to enlist without solid information about their decision.
Ultimately, though, it will be up to the students. As for Liam Bartels, last week he approached his principal directly about having both Shulman's group and Vets for Peace come to the school. He'd like to help organize an assembly, assuming he gets permission. He doesn't want to force his fellow students to listen to the groups, but he has the feeling many will want to. "We have to fight the military off unnecessarily," Bartels says. "I don't think it's good that the military can come into our schools, trying to get us to sign our lives away."
