Schools required to turn over students' names to military recruiters

Knight Ridder Newspapers ^ | FR Post 9-21-2003(Posted on Fri, Nov. 29, 2002) | RON HUTCHESON

[A Navy Vet]

As a Naval Reserve recruiter, I got a number of my recruits by cold calling. It works.

[edchambers]

As far as I'm concerned this is a non issue but I would like to see a return of the draft.Not so much because because I think we need the bodies but because I know from personal experiance that military service tends to have a sobering/maturing effect on youngsters.And of course as an added side benefit there are very few liberals in the military.

[jwalsh07]

There are 5 branches of the military and they are competing for the same young men. Nothing unusual about it. The services have to compete for the kids who are going to enlist and like any business, doing it over the phone is a good place to start.

[Timm]

Sure, it makes recruiting easier, but it would make recruiting easier for MacDonalds, too. Imagine the stink if MacD sued to get access to school rosters in order to find new counter help.

Your post does remind me of yet another pitfall of government education; the government schools have much less of a leg to stand on when it comes to protecting students' privacy. After all, they accept federal money, in one form or another, don't they?

For example, imagine if military recruiters sued toy stores to get access to the names of teen customers. No one would stand for it for a minute; liberals would be the first in that case to point to the proprietary rights of the business to its information. But let the government suggest that, since it's controlling education to a large degree, it ought to have special access to student information. Then liberals forget all about how important the private economy is to civil liberties.