July 05, 2005

• In the school where I work, this sort of thing is difficult for the teachers to come to terms with. What our experiences have shown is that many of the parents want recruiters to court their kids. They are currently active in getting a more robust Jr. ROTC program up and running. The teachers and admins don't really want it, but the parents are demanding that we provide this.
• I would think parents eager to have their children 'courted' in such a way could just as easily look up Recruitment in the yellow pages. Difficult to document telephone 'demands', I'll bet. *shudder*
• Then again, this is probably nothing new. Probably. I was plagued by calls from recruiters until I was well into my mid-twenties. Army and Marines, mostly. Even when I told them I was a philosophy major and religious studies minor, they were still trying to find some angle to spin that as just perfect for service in the armed forces. Chaplain? No thank you, I've no interest in joining the clergy. Uhh...com-put-ters? And no matter where I moved, they tracked me down.
• It's fairly easy to get rid of these people (though I guess it depends on the actual recruiter's need to provide bodies) but for me (on the 15th phone call) a simple "No thanks, I'm gay and I know how the military is about homosexuals..." worked just fine.
• Via MeFi: Leave My Child Alone
• Will this database include prep schools or just the poor? Why do they always send the poor?
• Poor kids have less options post-graduation than rich kids. This makes them more willing to join up in order to secure financial independence, college tuition, health care and so forth. I suspect the real reason to Argh's rhetorical question is: Because they can.
• They need to relax their standards with respect to criminal records and so forth. I know many kids that want to enlist but cannot because they have a marijuana conviction or a possession of alcohol conviction.
• Were I poor and unable to afford college, you bet your ass I'd have joined the military after high school. No better chance to improve your future prospects. Of course, it was peacetime when I graduated high school.
• I wonder if it matters where you live when it comes to recruitment enthusiasm. I never once got a call or received any literature about ROTC or any other military program, even when I expressed interest. But I lived in a rural, podunk, rednecky part of Tidewater (typically thought of as a primary recruiting area for the military!)... I assumed they didn't want me, and therefore decided not to do it...
• When I was in high school, all of the juniors had to take the ASVAB. I scored pretty high on all of the sections except mechanics. I was a little disappointed when I only got one perfunctory call from a recruiter. Not that I was interested in joining the military, it was just a matter of principle and proving that one can overcome a complete lack of mechanical aptitude.
• There's only one proper response. (Amusingly enough, "I got eyes like a bat, and my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse" applies to me. Joy!) And MCT, you might want to ask a bunch of people who are currently trying to to get shot or blown up how getting to college via the army is working out for them.
• you might want to ask a bunch of people who are currently trying to to get shot or blown up how getting to college via the army is working out for them. *chirp chirp chirp* He's here all week, folks!
• I have never once been contacted by any military organisation, not even after I made enquiries at an RAF recruitment office. But then, the countries I have lived in aren't into colonising the world.
• And MCT, you might want to ask a bunch of people who are currently trying to to get shot or blown up how getting to college via the army is working out for them. My comment wasn't intended to be a commercial for the military, just to underscore what an attractive option it is for those who have nowhere to go. And, as I said, I graduated high school in peacetime, so had I been in such a position back then, I probably would have signed up with the Navy immediately. Nowadays, no way in hell, unless I was just that desperate. But when there's no war on, one hell of a lot of needy people got one hell of a big leg up in life when they joined the military that they would have gotten precisely nowhere else. Unfortunately, there's heavy risk involved.
• When I was an 18-yr. old potential recruit, we had this, uh, police action in Southeast Asia and a little thing called the draft. I tried to enlist in the air force (too tall for anything but ground support--and nuh uh!) and I tried to use my German language skills to get sent to Germany--but they wanted two bodies on a "buddy plan" and my buddy was best suited for point man on a walk through a mine field (his clinical diagnosis was "bat-shit-loony"), so again, nuh uh. I thought about going CO, but while I objected, I can't say I was too conscientious about it. Then we had the lottery and I didn't get called. But when my boys came of age, I told them what my daddy told me: Fight for peace at home, sons! When the scions show up in even numbers with us poor sons a bees, then we'll talk. My father was the white commander of an all-black regiment in WWII and spoke often of the injustices he saw in the army. His greatest hope was for a free and equal America, something he felt we had not achieved when he died in 1991. Still workin' on it, pops!
• what an attractive option it is for those who have nowhere to go. From my observation and experience, these are the type of people the recruiters are looking for. The city I was living in during highschool for example, had the "good" school (which locals referred to as the "rich white kids school") and the "bad" school (for shame, I went to the "inner-city" school!). The "bad" school had a very extensive and large ROTC program. Recruiters hung outside during lunch time. You couldn't escape them! At the "good" school - the ROTC program was virtually non-existant. Recruiters probably didn't even waste their time... [I experienced both schools] Imagine that you don't have much to look forward to. The community you live in has already assumed you to be a failure before you've managed to take the SAT. College seems like some unattainable fantasy. But wait, Mr. Recruiter promises education, discipline & structure for my life, and all the rewards that come with joining the service. "Son, you'll be able to buy a fancy car after five years in the military. You say your math skills are bad? That's ok. There's a job for everyone in the military!" The recruiter that hounded me even dared to imply that the military would instill in me the "manliness" that was "apparently" missing from my life (he managed to stop by and talk with my mother when I was out one day. So he discovered that I was raised by a single parent. Fodder for his campaign to assail me). He tried every angle to no avail. I'll give him credit where deserved, he tried like a crazy motherfucker to get me! On preview: Wow deconstructo... Your father sounds like he was an admirable person.
• According to the Federal Register notice, the data will be open to "those who require the records in the performance of their official duties." It said the data would be protected by passwords. The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress. That's what creeps me out about this, not that they're trying to up recruitment. I understand that they're scrambling now that they've fucked up and joined a fairly embarrassing war (in my opinion) that no one wants to sign up for, but there has to be a better way to go about it, and one without such sinister undertones to it. As for recruiters pounding down my door, I graduated high school 2 years ago and for some reason they decided they absolutely HAD to have me in the service. I thought maybe they were trying to get more girls to sign up, bc the guy was insanely persistent. I tried to explain over and over again that he REALLY didn't want me in the armed forces, certainly nowhere near a gun, and that my 20 lb anemic ass need not be in charge of protecting anyone or their freedom. He told me I could study whatever I wanted in the army, offered a wide variety of possibilities (no, I don't want to be an engineer, thanks. No I don't want to be a chaplain either, I don't believe in god, thanks.), but I'm not sure what type of creative writing program the army has, and whether or not poetry is one of their strong suits. They've seriously gone mad with this business.
• And, as I said, I graduated high school in peacetime, so had I been in such a position back then, I probably would have signed up with the Navy immediately. Nowadays, no way in hell, unless I was just that desperate. Sure. But peacetime can dissapear awful quick. How many people in 1999 were predicting anything remotely resembling the current disposition of US forces?
• Oh, absolutely. I don't think we really disagree on this all that much. It's damned unfortunate that my country can't come up with some way for the poor to earn their way to a better life out of the ghettoes and backwaters that doesn't involve potentially putting their lives on the line. I'm pro-military in the sense that (1) I see it as a necessary evil for every country and (2) service in the military has helped a lot of people build much better lives for themselves. On the other hand, (1) there is something very predatory, even parasitic about the military's contact with poor communities (and, more the the point, schools), and (2) service in the military has also torn a whole lot of good families apart through death, PTSD, and so on. To put it another way, I think my father getting drafted to fight in Vietnam played a role in making him the good man I know today, but that's only because he was lucky enough not to be killed in any of the thousand dangerous situations he found himself in. rodgerd, check your profile e-mail when you get a chance. Got a short question for you.