They Need to be Watched
My son graduated high school in 2005. In his last year, especially, recruiters followed him around like a pack of dogs on the trail of a pork chop. It got so bad his senior year that he started hanging out in the bathroom to avoid contact with them. But it wasn’t just their harassment that is noteworthy; these guys told him he’d get things like lifetime free healthcare and signup bonuses that can actually be snatched away from you for almost nothing. They flat-out lied to the boy, and I flat-out told the last one that called here that he need not call my house ever again. Sure, they’ve always lied (they lied to me, and probably you too, if you signed up,) but the lies they were telling my son were past outrageous. And the kid couldn’t even eat lunch without a recruiter sitting down next to him (he’s about 6′ 3″ and he’s built like a refrigerator.)
Recruitment on school campuses needs to be watched, and I’m glad to see a major metropolitan school district take steps to do just that. After all, we have no idea when the next bedwetting coward will start a war so he can make himself feel like a man…
Schools will be required to provide military opt-out forms to 9th- and 10th-grade students and to develop a plan to monitor on-campus recruiting by the armed forces, according to new guidelines announced by the city’s Department of Education on Monday night.
The requirements, set to go into effect this fall, follow months of criticism from civil liberties groups, which had pushed to curtail recruiters’ access after school officials decided last year to give military recruiters access to a central database of students’ names, addresses and telephone numbers. Previously, recruiters had been forced to go from school to school to collect students’ data.
The new guidelines extend the requirement to include opt-out forms in orientation packets to younger high school students; in the past, only 11th- and 12th-grade students received the forms. The Department of Education will also add information on opting out to its instructions on their rights and to materials for students who take an armed services aptitude test.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, praised the changes, which include a requirement that principals appoint a staff member to oversee a military recruiting plan for each school. Ms. Lieberman said that too often there was not enough oversight of the recruiters and that in some cases they were too aggressive.
“They are not to get unfettered access to the students in the school,” she said. “They have to be regulated.”
The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, who had also lobbied education officials to make the changes, called the guidelines “real and substantive.”
“This is really going to protect our kids,” he said.
They need the protection, every bit as much as they need protection from pedophiles. There are plenty of Cheneys with political ambitions still walking the streets .
Tags: lies, military recruiters, schools
May 20th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
They shouldn’t be on school grounds period! WTF It’s basically arm wrestling these kids into service. They are really taking it too far now
May 20th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I do not know anyone that was not lied to. That is just what they do. Three of my four sons are lifers and I was not nice with recruiters so they never called but my sons found them.