Should Military Recruiters Be Barred From Campus?

I am a professor emeritus and a retired U.S. Navy active and reserve duty officer. I do support gay rights; I didn’t support starting the Iraqi War. I believe allowing a recruiter on campus is not forcing a student to join or even listen to a recruiting message (Speak Out, November 2005).

Check any college schedule of events or courses and you will find some that are distasteful to some individuals and supported by others. Most colleges allow and even encourage this diverse exposure. Why should some colleges reject this approach for the military?

It is not uncommon to see students and faculty refuse literature or “listening time” from individuals and groups that are objectionable to them. Why should the military not have the opportunity to be ignored if that is the individual’s decision?

Lynne Dodson writes, “Colleges have a responsibility to their students to ensure their well-being, and should be able to make decisions about what will be in their students’ best interest.” If that statement were really enforced, colleges would require students to attend classes, dorm hours would be reinstated for freshmen, co-ed dorms would be questioned, binge drinking would prompt more reaction by administrators, and academic standards would be raised.

A student’s best interest might well be speaking to a recruiter on campus. The student deserves the right to make that choice. Let’s remove the smoke screens regarding this issue.

—Richard F. Frazita
Kenmore, N.Y.

I believe strongly that high schools, colleges and universities should bar military recruiters, for they hide the reason they are here among us—the death rates associated with their organizations. These recruiters were not inside our schools in earlier years, but the Iraq occupation is growing more deadly day by day, and the troops must be replaced. The deaths are so many more than the White House told the public to expect. Moreover, with the fervor of the recruiting effort comes a fervent aspect because neither the heroism nor the honor on the battlefields is clear to anyone.

We do not have an honest rationale given by the military or the White House as to why we ask young people to sign up. The military themselves do not uphold the clear democratic process for opting out. Instead, these efforts are carefully targeted to places where peer pressure trumps reason, where propaganda is so slick as to avoid the obvious tradeoffs which youngsters might express and need to understand, but are unlikely to dare to express at the sight of a uniform and the red, white and blue.

It is false to claim American military people come on campus these days just as they did in past ROTC campaigns. Today’s needs are clear to readers of balanced news: American dead military members, alarmingly young, so very young, must be replaced. The more the young decide to take a second look at what is in their best interest, the more they will opt out and the more shrill the military efforts will become.

Teachers should be willing to stand up and be counted, to explain these reasons if no one else will.

Margaret Vaughan
Okee, Wis.