Military Recuiters Gone Wild: Report

By Michael Clancy Thu., Sep. 6 2007 at 5:57 PM

The Department of Education is not doing enough to protect students from the aggressive tactics of military recruiters in high schools, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and the New York Civil Liberties Union charged in a report released Thursday.

The core of the report, titled "We Want You(th)," is an unscientific survey of nearly 1,000 students at 45 public schools where military recruitment was thought to be most prevalent.

Among the reports findings:

21 percent of the students polled said classroom instructional time was given to military recruiters, a violation of Department of Education policy.

40 percent of students polled said their schools did not give them op-out forms at the beginning of the academic year. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, school officials must handover student information to military recruiters including students names, addresses and telephone, unless the students "opt out" of this requirement.

NYCLU Donna Lieberman said of the report:

"The time is long past due for the DOE to ensure that all students know and can exercise their rights to opt-out of military databases, to ensure that not a minute of instruction time be spent with military recruiters, and to ensure that military recruiters are not given free run of schools to meet their war-time quotas."

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