Recruiters get names from No Child Left Behind Act!!!!!

[NoSheep]

This article appeared in my local Raleigh NC Sunday paper. It details the trials of a recruiter trying to get kids to sign up for the service. I found it shocking. This is the first time I've posted an article. I hope I have done it right.

(snip)

Ariton's biggest enemy these days is time. Every day, he wakes to a daunting number of tasks: He must call perhaps 200 high school seniors or recent grads, working from lists he gets thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act.

(snip)

Here's the link
http://www.newsobserver.com/print/sunday/front/story/2299465p-8678651c.html

[bif]

1. Not many people know about this provision.

You have to call your child's counsellor to have their name taken OFF the list. It should be the other way around.

[quispquake]

2. There is an opt out...

Print one of these out, and have your child bring it to school...

http://www.militaryfreezone.org/opt_out

[Liberty Belle]

4. If you opt out, colleges don't get your teens' name, either.

We asked, and that's what the high school told us.
So unless you want to deny your high school student the opportunity to be recruited by colleges and scholarship offers, you have to put up with letting military recruiters call them.

That said, I gave the recruiter who kept calling here such an earful that he finally stopped calling. I told him my son might have listed this number, but that I own the phoneline and want us put on the do not call list as I don't support the war, don't support the president, and don't want my son blown to bits over a war that is based on lies. I told him my son is second in his graduating class, will likely be accepted at top universities and has a bright future ahead of him -- so to please stop trying to convince my kid to go risk his life to defend lies.

The phone hasn't rung since.

[Bluebear]

14. Bravo. n/t

[bif]

15. Not true

We opted out and my daughter gets about 10 letters a day from colleges.

[CoffeeCat]

18. Wow....ring, ring Liberty Belle!

You win the "hero of the week" award.

Your response to that recruiter was brilliant!

It was enjoyable reading that, and I'm so glad that people in the military are hearing opinions like this. They need to hear it!

Awesome, LB.

:)

[FreedomAngel82]

23. They used to call here

But my mother told them she would tell their reps they were bothering us if they didn't leave us alone (and they were just bugging). Now you know why the name (since he doesn't fund the program).

[Oreo]

3. I want to say unbelieveable... but it's not

Thanks for posting this! I think it's important that this gets out to a wider audience.

Recommending for Greatest Page

[NoSheep]

5. I'm just blown away! Is that what "no child" is all about?

The entire article just disgusts me. The recruiter scours Wal-Marts looking for recruits. The man sure knows where all the poor folks are who are perhaps too desperate to avoid signing up.

[FreedomAngel82]

24. Of course

Just watch "Bowling for Columbine." Moore has a section there were the recruiters specifically go to the poorer areas for their recruit numbers.

[NoSheep]

6. AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

[marmar]

7. No child left behind...

if they suit up and start blasting every Iraqi in sight.

[yankeedem]

8. Gee, poor recruiter

He is finding out that young people would rather smoke pot and work fast food jobs than get blown to bits in an illegal, pointless, war.

:think:

Those crazy kids, huh?

[MADem]

12. During the Reagan Build Up

Recruiting was an absolute BITCH. Back then, the competition wasn't fast food, it was UPS and FEDEX--they paid a real good starting salary, they had a pension plan, they gave you uniforms, they had a college plan, and at the time they didn't drug test. No recruit training, no PT, no tons of shots, have fun at the weekend, and you didn't have to leave your hometown!

Kids would start there after high school and LAUGH at the recruiters trying to sell them on slave wages and shit from above. College? We don't need your steenkin' college--our company pays for it!

[unhappycamper]

9. .

[Liberty Belle]

21. Great graphic!

[tubbacheez]

10. Opt out and research colleges on your own.

I always found it more satisfying to avoid the junk mail and calls from both military and college recruiters.




The world's a big place. Why listen to the advertising when you can explore it firsthand?

[MADem]

11. A great opportunity to get the word out

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.

[pilgrimsoul]

13. Yeah - the Coasties probably do the best of all in recruiting

since it's the only branch of the service a kid can join that won't get him sent to the middle east right now...unless that situation has changed.

[MADem]

16. It has changed

It changed back in Gulf ONE. They lost a couple, too.

Who do you think did all the Persian/Arabian (if you will) Gulf minesweeping? Our brave Coasties!

They also go into harm's way in the drug interdiction arena, in serious fashion, working hand in hand with USN assets. It ain't just rescuing idiots who don't check the weather and hauling drunks off their swamped vessels anymore.

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,NI_Iraq_0803,00.html
Edited to add this instructive link!

[pilgrimsoul]

17. Thanks for the link!

Very informative. I wonder if they're also deploying Coast Guard medical personnel to help with the wounded in Iraq. Does anyone know?

[MADem]

20. USN is there in droves, to augment USMC, mostly

USAF gets to "play" as well.

Interestingly enough, when former SECDEF Dick Cheney's drawdown was implemented, it did not, for the most part, apply (in equivalent measure, anyway) to medical personnel. This posed a real challenge for installation commanders, because due to specialty constraints within the Medical Service Corps, and what is known as "stovepiping" (concurrent chains of command and head butting at the flag/general level), these assets were almost "on ice" and could not be diverted to other collateral tasks to take some of the workload when other support staff were cut. As a consequence, you had support staff working their asses off, and medical personnel doing light duty at some installations. Boy, has that changed! The medical staffs are stressed and overstressed right now.

Makes you ask this question: was this whole drawdown charade a long-range plan?

Anyway, CG medical assets in Iraq are negligible. They do play a big role in the deployment readiness equation, of course. If you want to see their lessons learned slideshow, you can find it here (PDF, need adobe to view): http://www.usafp.org/Word_PDF_Files/Syllabus-2004-Annual-Meeting/Tuesday%2023/03.5Tedesco%20OIF.pdf

[jbnow]

25. My son lied (I hope!) to stop calls

He is 31 now but was getting frequent calls late in high school despite clearly stating he would never, ever enlist and wanted no more calls.
One day I heard him saying he was interested in enlisting if he didn't have to give up all his drugs. Which did they test for? He happily answered questions about how often he used them (not every day, usually 5 or 6 days a week), which drugs he used and which he would or would not give up. He tried to get the guy to help him problem solve regarding testing. (He heard there were things that could disguise the THC, where could he get them? Psychedelics should still be OK, because tests don't show them, right? and so on...)

He was very pleased when he hung up and said he didn't think they'd call again. I suggested this could bite him in the ass if he runs for president. I didn't think it was a great idea to tell some official you are using illegal drugs. But he was just fed up with them not taking no for an answer and that he was being harassed to be trained to kill.
They never did call again, nor did the police raid our house or anything. But guess he won't be running for president and I would never recommend this to end the calls.

[paineinthearse]

19. Glad to see this is hitting the hinterlands.

DU had a couple threads a month or two back

Search "Anti-Flag" (as in the punk band). Rep. McDermott and Woolsey are championing the closure of the disclosure provision. Go to their house sites for more info.

[VLC98]

22. My husband was a recruiter back in 2000.

The three schools he covered weren't required to give names & numbers of students, but they all did. I don't think it's a big deal, provided students can opt out of the list OR the recruiter doesn't call back after being told where to go. I have a 17 year old daughter and haven't had a recruiter call yet...perhaps they know about her!