- Why does the military have direct access to the private
information of American high school students? Under the No Child Left Behind
legislation, Sec 9528, education funding in America has been turned into
a recruiting tool for our military! Buried in this legislation is a section
that mandates student private information be given directly to the military
unless the student's parent or guardian opts their records out -- meaning
that a request letter from the parent or guardian must be submitted to
the school to keep the student's records private.
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- This is essentially a permission slip to keep one's records
private instead of a permission slip to authorize access to one's private
records. Yes, the law really was intentionally written completely backwards!
To make matters worse, no concerted effort is being made to inform students
and parents that their personal information is being given out.
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- While a few organizations have talked about this law,
more must be done to educate students and parents on how this issue directly
affects them and their private records. I am proud to be working with Congressman
McDermott of Washington State, Congressman Stark of California and Congresswoman
Woolsey of California to try and build a greater national awareness of
what this legislation does to student's right to privacy.
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- If the military is already given millions in tax-payer
dollars for advertising, why does it need direct access to student's private
information to aid recruiting? The answer is in a March 6, 2005 Reuters'
News Service article that states,
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- "The regular Army is 6 percent behind its year-to-date
recruiting target, the Reserve is 10 percent behind, and the Guard is 26
percent short."
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- Those numbers and the fact that the military is already
stretched much too thin all over the world -- especially in Iraq -- means
that recruiters are under ever increasing pressure to convince young people
to enlist. Recruitment has clearly been made more difficult, because American
casualties now top 1500 deaths and over 10,000 wounded and many students
are well aware of the serious realities and potential consequences that
accompany enlisting. Students have heard vets talk candidly about being
sent into combat under-equipped and without proper training. They've seen
vets deal with injuries that the military did not provide adequate treatment
for because the injuries did not occur within the parameters of the military's
definition of "combat." They know that more severely wounded
soldiers will be coming back from Iraq while at the same time this administration
closes veterans' hospitals.
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- To compensate for students' greater understanding of
the risks associated with military service, recruiters have implemented
more and more predatory practices to meet their required numbers. That
is why this personal information is so valuable to these desperate recruiters
trying to meet the demand of the current US war machine. The Department
of Education and the Department of Defense have even sent several school
systems threatening letters demanding that they comply with No Child Left
Behind and hand over this information or they will not receive their funding.
However, the federal government cannot stop individual students and parents
from opting out, because this option was written into the legislation.
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- We must make sure our schools comply with requests to
keep an individual's information private while fighting for changes in
the heinous legislation that allowed this invasion of privacy to happen
in the first place. But it will take an enormous campaign and a huge amount
of effort to educate people on how invasive this act is! Help keep our
military a true volunteer force, our students safe, and their information
private -- spread the word in your community about what is happening to
students' personal information!
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- To learn more, download and print out an opt-out form,
visit militaryfreezone.com.
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- - Justin Sane is lead singer of the band Anti-Flag.
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- (c) 2005, WorkingForChange
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- http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18755
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