Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)

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From Draft NOtices, January-March 2023

- Lauren Reyna Morales

    In July of 2022 the New York Times published an explosive exposé on sexual abuse in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (JROTC). JROTC is a federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces that operates in at least 3,500 high schools with more than 500,000 students enrolled across the country. The U.S. Army JROTC website describes the program as “one of the largest character development and citizenship programs for youth in the world.” The NY Times investigation revealed that since 2017, there had been at least 33 JROTC instructors criminally charged with sexual misconduct against their students, and several other accusations. The report detailed that within the last five years, the Army decertified 24 instructors because of credible sexual abuse allegations. Other military branches also had to decertify several of their JROTC instructors for sexual misconduct: 15 instructors in the Marine Corps JROTC, 10 in the Navy, and seven in the Air Force. Two additional JROTC instructors accused of sexual abuse died by suicide before their cases could be settled. All of the programs’ instructors are retired military officers.

More recently, it was revealed that the number of substantiated allegations of sexual abuse from students against their JROTC instructors since 2017 is almost double what the NY Times initially reported. On November 16, 2022, Defense Department officials confirmed that the Pentagon had received credible reports of at least 58 cases in which JROTC instructors sexually abused or harassed students during the last five years. Several other instructors also have pending allegations. Military officials made these disclosures before a congressional subcommittee whose members had expressed concern at how the armed forces had apparently “failed to properly oversee the program.” At a November hearing, Defense Department officials stated that changes to the program were “already being implemented: more oversight of instructors, more opportunities for students and parents to file complaints, and more aggressive recruiting of women instructors.”

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From Draft NOtices, January-March 2023

- Rick Jahnkow

     A recent series of articles in the New York Times has drawn attention to some of the most egregious features of high school JROTC that are being protested by critics of militarism in the educational system. Included in the series is a December 11, 2022, front-page exposé of schools involuntarily enrolling students in the military training program, and then making it difficult for them to transfer out.

To write the article, journalist Mike Baker and other Times associates collected enrollment data using over 200 records requests sent to schools around the country. The data revealed the following:

[Dozens] of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75% of students in a single grade into the classes, including schools in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Alabama.

It was also noted in the article that, “a vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households.”

In Chicago recently, the public school system acknowledged that automatic enrollment in JROTC was a significant issue. The school district’s inspector general issued a report concluding that it was a problem experienced disproportionately in lower-income neighborhoods. The report also revealed that over the past two years, nearly all ninth graders at 10 Chicago high schools were automatically enrolled in JROTC while procedures for opting out of the program were not clearly communicated with students and parents.

JROTC is in approximately 3500 high schools around the U.S. The military courses are taught by retired military officers hired by the schools, using textbooks produced by and for the various military branches (see past issues of Draft NOtices for textbook excerpts that were compiled in 2021 by Project YANO). Though the military claims it is not a recruiting program, advocates of the program have told Congress that it is the military’s best in-school recruiting program. In one recent example, during his 2019 congressional testimony, Secretary of the Army Mark Esper acknowledged that JROTC “tends to . . . encourage kids to join the military at higher rates than anywhere else.”

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From Draft NOtices, October-December 2022

— Lauren Reyna Morales

In July of 2022, the New York Times published an explosive report detailing widespread abuse of high school students at the hands of trusted, powerful adults. These adults gained access to their young victims in their schools, as instructors in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC). JROTC is a federal program sponsored by the United States Armed Forces that partners with high schools across America. The U.S. Army JROTC website describes the program as “one of the largest character development and citizenship programs for youth in the world.” JROTC professes that their curriculum promotes leadership, character building, and community service for their young adult students.
 

The article “‘I Felt Trapped’: Sexual Abuse of Teens in the Military’s JROTC Program” was the result of a thorough investigation performed by the New York Times. Research for the report included interviewing 13 victims, school employees, and a former JROTC instructor. “Thousands of court documents, investigative files and other records obtained through more than 150 public disclosure requests” were also examined. The findings of this wide-scope examination are shocking and plentiful. The investigation uncovered that in the last five years, at least 33 JROTC instructors have been criminally charged with sexual misconduct involving their students.

Various other instructors were also accused of sexual assault during this time, but never criminally charged. The Times findings show that there is one arrest in every 232 instructor positions — a rate that is severely more frequent than the civilian-teacher arrest ratio. Students have reported incidents of sexual assault at the hands of JROTC instructors “in classrooms and supply closets, during field trips or on late-night rides home, sometimes committed after instructors plied students with alcohol or drugs.” Victims interviewed in the article shared their unique experiences falling into the hands of this abuse. Geography and specifics may have separated them, but their stories followed roughly the same outline: A military veteran who led a JROTC course offered at their school posed himself as a mentor to gain their trust, exploit his power, and horrifically abuse them.

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Ninth CIRCUIT COURT RULING: CONFRONTING MILITARISM BY USING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH SCHOOLS

When the military comes to your local high school, you have a legal right to give students an opposing view. This has been the position taken by federal district courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois and two federal appellate courts. The most broadly-worded decision came from a case that COMD took to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the 1980s. Here is the background:

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