Prop. V promotes 'Don't ask, don't tell' mandate

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Friday, October 3, 2008 | Mark Sanchez

[presidio9]

Should public schools open their doors to military recruitment, of any type, on campus? That was the question San Francisco voters took up in 2005, when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition I, which urged the city's schools to reject military recruitment in favor of college scholarship programs. The San Francisco Unified School District responded in 2006 by beginning to phase out of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, a long-standing and well-funded recruitment instrument of the Department of Defense, which targets San Francisco students of color, often from poor families, who attend seven public high schools, while steering clear of the city's private school student body, who tend to be more affluent and white.

The phase-out, which has reduced JROTC enrollment from 1,650 to about 500 this year, and which will entirely end the program in June 2009, was also heavily based on the U.S. military's homophobic "Don't ask, don't tell" mandate. Because JROTC instructors are selected from a pool of retired military officers, who by definition could not have been openly gay while serving in the U.S. armed forces, the school district's anti-discriminatory hiring policies were being contravened. There is no other class in SFUSD that involves instructors who are virtually outside of the district's hiring selection purview. By parting ways with JROTC, the district will finally align its hiring policies.

But more than that, our schools will stop sending a mixed message to students, particularly our gay and questioning students, who enter the JROTC program being told they are not discriminated against, but who may then choose to apply to the armed forces and encounter rejection based solely on their sexual orientation.

With Proposition V, which asks the school district to roll back the clock and reintroduce the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, clearly there are

[presidio9]

Mark Sanchez is the president of the San Francisco Board of Education, and is a gay public school teacher. He co-authored the JROTC phase-out policy for SFUSD.

[Dilbert San Diego]

This kind of stuff is such bull-blank. Reason being, they are using the gays in the military to mask their contempt for the military. Would they be pleased to have the JROTC program recruit students if they did away with dont’ ask don’t tell and allowed open homosexuals to serve?

Just wondering.

And if they do away with don’t ask don’t tell, with military recruiting offices be welcome in The Castro????

Just wondering.

[SevenofNine]

If they going do it Fine let Frisco don’t get ANYYYYY Federal money that works for me