Reply #11: A great opportunity to get the word out [View All]

[MADem]

is to hand out flyers at the PTA meetings, or put them under the windscreen wipers of the cars.

I'll bet that if you wrote and SPECIFIED your opt-out, that your kids' names could be provided to colleges, but not recruiters.

This could be an interesting court case--the Quaker kid can't get recruited by colleges because his religious beliefs make him a pacifist, and his parents had to opt out to keep the recruiters away...sounds like religious discrimination to me.

After this May, this is not an issue for my family (for awhile, anyway).

Of course, you could always lie to the recruiters when they call, and berate them--not for the military aspect, but just say something like "This is NOT funny!! Are you another one of those punk kids on the football team, always teasing my little Bubbie?" "No, Ma'am, I'm SGT SoandSo with Army Recruiting, really!" "Well, my son has a SEVERE disability, and would not qualify for service, even though he wants to serve, just like his daddy, who was a colonel!" At this point, the recruiter WILL ask what the disability is...use your imagination at this point, make up a good one, but make sure it really is disqualifying. Extra fingers and toes are NOT...blindness, though, or a heart condition, is.

Once you do that, they line you off the list. You will never get a phone call from that recruiting station ever again (you may get the odd call from a "poacher" from a station in another area, but that's rare). However, they all compete, so if you blow off the Navy, you still may hear from the Navy Reserve, Army, Army Reserve, AF, AF Reserve, USMC, USMC reserve...and maybe even the Coasties, though they don't kill themselves recruiting, they do pretty well with walk-ins.