NEWS: Students protest outside military recruiting stations

Students carried signs that read, "Money for tuition not ammunition," and "I want to learn to read not to kill."

Anti-Military Recruiting Campaigns Heats up At Seattle Schools
On Monday, four US military recruiting offices in Seattle were shut down when students blocked the entrances to protest recruitment practices and to oppose the occupation of Iraq. Meanwhile the Parent Teacher Student Association at one school has passed a resolution recommending that military recruiters be barred from the campus. [includes rush transcript]
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Students from nine local universities, community colleges and high schools joined in simultaneous demonstrations. A military recruiting office near the University of Washington and another near Garfield High School were also blockaded by groups of students.
Garfield High School also made news recently when the school's Parent Teacher Student Association passed a resolution recommending that military recruiters be barred from the campus. The resolution, passed on May 9th, was the first of its kind in the state. Seattle school district officials then released a statement stating that under President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, it was illegal to ban only military recruiters - they must be granted the same access to students as college or job recruiters at schools that receive federal money.
www.democracynow.org.../05/25/1414224

Military Recruitment in High Schools Raises Questions
The head of the Army Recruiting Command, Major General Michael D. Rochelle, called for a “values stand-down” known in military parlance as a day of suspension on May 20, 2005. Aside from such a day in October 2004 which dealt with safety issues for recruiters, Major General Rochelle has never called a session to address recruiters regarding what he referred to as a means of reviewing the moral obligations of their mission. During a news briefing on May 20th, Rochelle said, “that some of the news coverage did make me more sensitive to the fact that there were some practices that were occurring just below my radar.”

At the heart of this matter is Rochelle’s own admission of “overlooking or concealing problems and police records that might make a recruit ineligible.” Most notably is the case of a 17-year-old high school student in suburban Denver, David McSwane, who posed as a drug user and dropout for an article for his school’s newspaper. Recruiters assisted McSwane with passing a drug test, manufacturing a fake diploma and getting around physical fitness requirements. In Houston, TX a local television news station, KHOU, broke the story of a recruiter who threatened to arrest a young high school student if he failed to show up at the recruitment station. And in Ohio a mentally ill student was signed for military service despite prohibition of such enlistments. His medical records were available but were never requested by the military according to his parents.

Since the all-volunteer military was formed in 1973, following United States involvement in the Viet Nam War, the Army in particular faces its biggest challenge to date in signing new recruits. The Army has not met its recruitment goals for the third straight month and is 6,600 recruits behind from where it hoped to be at this point in the fiscal year which would be 80,000 signed by the fiscal year’s end date of October 1st. The Marines have also faced their biggest recruitment deficit in over a decade. At issue is whether enough positions will be filled in order to effectively fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
www.commonvoice.com...