You may have heard about a group of people on November 30, 2007 who closed down two military recruitment offices in Williston, VT. If you did, you probably know about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) section 9528 that mandates military recruitment in public schools, and that the students from Mount Mansfield High School were demonstrating against this that day.

Section 9528 of NCLB (Armed Forces Recruiter Access To Students And Student Recruiting Information) states… “this Act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings…. A secondary school student or the parent of the student may request that the student’s name, address, and telephone listing described in paragraph (1) not be released without prior written parental consent, and the local educational agency or private school shall notify parents of the option to make a request and shall comply with any request.”

Most of the students and parents I talk with around the state are not aware of this policy. Some educators, and even legislators have also said they are not aware of it. While there is a clause stating that students and parents can “opt-out” of the students’ information being sent to military recruiters, most students and parents do not even know it is being sent out, let alone that they can opt-out. Only because of legislation passed in May, 2006 in VT, did many of the public schools begin to send home “opt-out” information to the students’ families. Even still, the information tends to be tucked away in the student handbook or sent home within a pile of forms that are rarely read.

With the implementation of NCLB in 2002, and the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. military’s need for soldiers increased. It increased even more in 2005 when national support of the Iraq war went into decline, and less people enlisted in the military. In June of 2006, Lt. Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer in the U.S. military to refuse deployment to Iraq, stating that he believed Operation Iraqi Freedom to be illegal and immoral, and if he deployed, it would make him party to war crimes. In 2004, Camilo Mejia was the first US combat veteran to refuse to redeploy to Iraq, after witnessing detainees being tortured and abused by US troops under the direction of American civilian contract employees. To date, over 100 G.I.’s have refused deployment, redeployment or gone AWOL (facing a variety of legal repercussions) due to a surge in opposition to the morality and legal basis for the war in Iraq.

If soldiers are refusing to fight, and veterans and students are staging demonstrations at recruitment centers with the message “Out of our schools, Out of Iraq,” why do we think it is a good idea to promote military recruitment in our schools? Is it because the schools don’t understand the policy well enough to fight it, or do they believe they are looking out for the best interest of the students?

Either way, the realities of military service these days are much different than what the recruiters are telling our students.

Money for education is the biggest carrot that recruiters hang in front of potential recruits. The Montgomery GI Bill - Army/Navy College Fund, is in reality, according to an August 27, 2004 press release from the US Army Recruiting Command, only available to those who qualify with high test scores, sign up for what the military deems “critical” military specialties (critical usually means hardest to fill and least desirable), and enlist for at least six years of active military duty. Approximately 95 percent of those who enter the military are not eligible for this maximum amount.

According to a 2007 article posted on Army.com, “statistics from the U.S. Department of Education show that in school year 2003-04 the average cost of tuition, fees and room and board rates for all 4-year colleges (public and private combined) was $15, 504. It doesn’t take a math major to see that with those costs, attending a four year school until graduation can cost as much as $60,000 on average. With a little digging on the Internet one can discover that the Montgomery G.I. Bill will pay up to approximately $38,000 worth of education benefits, depending on individual duty status and eligibility.

We all have the right to self-determine our path in life, and we have the right to know what we are getting into when we make a decision. There are many options in which we know truthfully upfront what we are getting into, and are not wounded physically, physiologically or emotionally in the process.

Jen Berger is with the Recruiting for Peace Campaign at the The Peace & Justice Center in Burlington.