Students ask St. Paul board to limit recruiters
Antiwar students at Central High want the school board to regulate when military recruiters can visit and where they can set up.
By Joy Powell <mailto:jpowell at startribune.com> , Star Tribune
Central High senior Shane Davis was part of a group of antiwar students who asked the St. Paul school board Tuesday night to limit when military recruiters visit and where they set up their table.
"At our school, recruiters have been coming in on an almost weekly basis," Davis, 17, told the board.
He was one of seven or eight students who addressed the board. About 20 students and 40 supporters were there to call for changes in the way Army recruiters operate at the school.
The board members listened attentively and some took notes while the students spoke at the district's headquarters.
The board will discuss recruiting issues on Jan. 23.
Capt. Mark Gunther, the Army recruiting company commander in Minneapolis, said in an interview that recruiters work within the framework set by the school administration.
The students asked the school board to meet three demands:
* Restrict military recruiters to the career resource center and prevent any unsupervised contact with students.
* Stop military recruiters from coming to Central High more often than other postsecondary school or job recruiters might come.
* Ensure that the group's organization, Youth Against War and Racism, receives seven days notice before recruiters enter school grounds.
"It just seems their tactics for recruiting are very desperate, and that they're willing to do some things that others might consider inappropriate," Davis said in an interview.
Lauren Ries, a 17-year-old senior, said the recruiters set up a table in a prime location next to the cafeteria, making it easy for them to attract students during lunch.
"The recruiters ask the students questions, give out prizes such as pens, lanyards, basketballs and video games, and give students hopes of college money and job training," she said.
Ries also cited the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. The association says that only 8 percent of troops who sign up for the GI Bill tuition benefits actually receive the full benefit.
In an interview, Gunther said recruiters will go to the school's career resource center if that's where the administration wants them to go. But he added that it may not be as convenient for students to get the information that the recruiters have to offer.
He also commented on the Army education incentives, which are advertised to total as much as $70,000.
The amount of money actually received is tied to aptitude scores, the jobs the soldiers pick and the number of years served, Gunther said.
Davis and others initially demanded in November that the board ban the recruiters. But because of federal funding guidelines, the recruiters have a right to be in the schools.
Brandon Madsen, 20, had founded Youth Against War and Racism while he attended Kennedy High School in Bloomington, and he has helped a chapter organize at Central High. Tuesday night, he and others came to the board meeting with signs with slogans such as "Demilitarize our Schools."While we feel that recruiters should be out of schools altogether, the schools are basically blackmailed into having them there by the No Child Left Behind Act that threatens to cut school funding if they don't allow recruiters," Madsen said in an interview.
Davis and others presented board members with a petition bearing 332 signatures. Madsen said they've also received more than 15 letters of support from community members and local organizations.
Karina Sahlin attended the board meeting Tuesday night, although she was not one of the handful who addressed the board. She is against the war in Iraq and feels strongly, at age 15, that it's unfair to have military recruiters in the schools.
The presence of the recruiters upsets her, Sahlin said.
"We are forced to see them every day," she said. "It's not like we can get around them. They come into our class, and tell you you can become a linguist, or something like that [by enlisting]. They say you will probably not see combat, and that 'we will give you funding for college.' "
Antiwar students said they worry that fellow classmates who want to go to college might be lured by the promises of recruiters. For some students, the promises of paid educations come easier than the research needed to check into colleges, Sahlin said.
Joy Powell * 612-673-7750 * jpowell at startribune.com
©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
Stephen Philion Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology St. Cloud State University St. Cloud, MN
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