Opting in to the Iraq War

Opting for ‘Opt-In’ by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor (AlterNet) shows how schools are dealing with increasingly predatory military recruiters in their schools. As the military misses more and more recruiting deadlines, they demand more and more access to the records for younger potential recruits: kids in high school. The military has access to a student’s personal records by default, unless the school district or the parents deny it.

That is correct: the otherwise gloriously realized NCLB Act includes a stipulation that the kids of our nation are open to military recruiting or their schools will be shut down (the likely result of losing federal funding in many states strapped for cash by other bush-era budget cuts).

Not all school districts are bowing to the pressure; as could be expected, the Berkeley Unified School District in California is leading the way with an end run around the policy, devising an “opt-in” scheme that results in far fewer records being released to the military. It could be argued that this results in a “better use of time for the military recruiters themselves. It means they don’t have to waste their time with students who don’t want to be contacted.” This is disengenuous, as they also don’t get to work over students who don’t know what the hell they want to do with their lives. On the other hand, those are the kind of recruits who count as initial “hires”, but end up being more trouble than they’re worth as they fail to adjust to a military life.

An opt-in policy, as any marketer knows, results in much lower overall enrollment in any program. Berkeley’s program resulted in “27 … out of approximately 1,800 students” records being released, whereas nearby Fremont withheld only “730 of 4,320 junior and senior students”’ records. Berkeley released 1.5% of their records, whereas Fremont released 83% of theirs.

It’s refreshing to see school districts like Berkeley, which, due to their more affluent population, have less to fear from losing federal funding, spearheading ways of helping out kids in a country looking for more bodies to throw on the fires it started. There is legislation underway (H.R. 551) to “make “opt-in” the recognized law of the land.”, which would make a lot more sense in a free country. Since “[t]he Republican leadership is not interested in pushing this legislation”, proponents of the bill use a favored dirty tactic by “attaching [it] to a defense or appropriations bill”.

While rider bills are despicable, this is a much better use of them than squeezing through draconion national ID policies.