Protestors against the presence of military recruiters in schools were a strong presence at the National Antiwar Demonstration this weekend in Washington, D.C., said Athens residents and Ohio University students who attended.
There is a lot of buzz about counter-recruitment
especially now especially after the excitement of D.C. said Kelsey McCoy, an OU junior and president of Students for Peace and Justice.
The College Not Combat contingent was one such group that wants to oust recruiters from high school and college campuses. It says recruiters prey on young, poor students by lying about job opportunities, college education and personal development in the military, according to the College Not Combat campaign Web site.
The military's new marketing campaign is targeting poor students and students of color said Damon Krane, an OU senior and a member of both InterAct and Athens Can't Wait Coalition.
InterAct is an OU student-activist organization, and Athens Can't Wait is an affiliate of the national Can't Wait coalition aiming to end the war in Iraq.
Krane hopes counter-recruitment efforts will be successful, ultimately putting an end to the war in Iraq by depleting the military's already-struggling recruitment rates.
However, Lt. Col. Mike Faruque, commander of the Army's Columbus Recruiting Battalion, believes military recruiters should have the same access to high school students as college recruiters and doesn't see the counter-recruitment movement as a problem.
We do advocate college because we need an educated Army
he said. The real problem is that we don't see enough kids graduating high school in Ohio.
Recruiters from all branches of the military are permitted in Athens High School. They attend student lunch periods with displays and recruiting information, said Carl Martin, Athens City School District superintendent.
Current law gives military recruiters access to directory information - the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all juniors and seniors. Schools that choose to withhold directory information from military recruiters risk losing federal funding.
High schools give this information to recruiters automatically unless parents or students ask to have their information kept private. Parents are permitted by law to opt out by formal request to the principal and should do so before school starts or early in the year, Martin said.
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