From Draft NOtices, July-September 2008
— Mernie Aste
Following a recent vote by the San Francisco School Board, students in San Francisco can no longer get physicaleducation credit for the military’s JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps). The San Francisco Chronicle states, “The 4-1 vote will likely cripple the 90-year-old military education program that serves 1,200 students because most use it to satisfy their PE requirement.” Cadets currently in JROTC attended the meeting in uniforms to show their support for the program. San Francisco School Board member Norman Yee was quoted as saying, “This is an emotional issue for many people.”
Within that same month, the Long Beach Board of Education unanimously decided to no longer count JROTC (along with dance, drill team and marching band) toward meeting P.E. graduation requirements; while the California Department of Education has required that P.E. classes address all state standards and be taught by teachers with P.E. credentials.
Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (COMD)
- Rick Jahnkow
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California Bill Would Limit Military’s Access to Data on Students
From Draft NOtices, April-June 2008
— Rick Jahnkow
A new bill in the California legislature could, if passed, set a major precedent at the state level for protecting students from aggressive military recruiting. Assembly Bill 2994, the Student and Family Privacy Protection Act of 2008, was introduced on February 22, 2008, by Assembly members Sally Lieber (D-Mountain View) and Loni Hancock (D-East SF Bay).
AB 2994 would accomplish two main goals: (1) make it easier for students and parents to opt out from the contact lists that high schools must give to recruiters; and (2) put an end to the military’s practice of using the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test to extract detailed personal information about students.
The opt-out portion of the proposed law repeats language from a previous bill that passed the state legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in October of 2006. It addresses the problem of schools not adequately informing students and parents about their right to withhold information when lists of students’ names, addresses and phone numbers are released to military recruiters. Because of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, federal law threatens schools with the loss of federal education dollars if they do not release such lists, but the same law also says that individual students and their parents must be given a chance to opt out.
- Jorge Mariscal
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New Studies Show Most Military Veterans “Not Career Ready”
From Draft NOtices, April - June 2008
—Jorge Mariscal
“It's really hard to make the things you were doing in Iraq relevant to what an employer is looking for today.” — Army Cpl. Vicki Angell
It is a commonplace of American working-class culture that military service is a pathway into the middle class. The experience of World War II veterans fixed the myth of upward mobility in the national consciousness. Military service came to be seen as the way out of the “ghetto,” the “barrio,” and every other class-determined location where poverty and limited economic opportunity block hopes and aspirations. Today, military recruiters make the promise of “bettering oneself” the cornerstone of their high-stakes sales pitch to young people in search of a productive future.
Several new surveys of veterans, however, expose the shaky foundations of the myth of mobility. Late last year, Military.com, a Web site within the Monster Worldwide network, polled 4,442 veterans and active duty servicemen. During the same period, the Department of Veterans Affairs hired Abt Associates of Bethesda, Maryland to conduct a study of 1,941 recently separated service members (RSS) who had been discharged within the last one to three years.
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:
