SOY table at Incarnate Word University, San Antonio

SOY was invited last month to have an all-day table during a Peace Day event at Incarnate Word University in San Antonio, so Hart and an IVAW colleague staffed the table.  We were surprised to hear that there is an ROTC program at that Catholic university, and some of the ROTC students stopped by the table to talk with Hart, who, as an army veteran of the Iraq War, had some things to share about war realities that the students had not seemed aware of.  Hart said it was an epic day, with good conversations with the college students.  Here are some of the students' reflections about causes and prevention of war:

Drop the MIC

An eloquent Veterans Day message from Matt Howard, co-director of Iraq Veterans Against the War:

This day isn't one our community takes pride in. We have always cringed at the "Thank you for your service" platitudes we are offered. Thanking us assumes that our service and support of the occupations is something to be grateful for, and it shuts off any chance for dialogue about the atrocities of wars. We refuse to forget what we took part in and we will not stop in working to end these wars of choice, wars of greed, wars manufactured by people who don't bear their burdens. Our community of veterans is marking this day a bit differently than most. Today, we are launching our #DropTheMIC (military industrial complex) campaign. 

Drop the MIC is focused on highlighting how U.S. militarism affects everyone's lives- those living abroad facing the brunt of U.S. forces and weapons and those living here, facing over militarized police. The same companies that provide weapons to Saudi Arabia and militias in Syria are equipping police departments with armored vehicles. U.S. militarism shows up in the recruiters in our schools, the surveillance aircraft monitoring our protests and the Pentagon sponsored 'Salute our Veterans' spectacles at sports arenas across the country. It is immersed in our lives and we are committed to working to make the invisible seen and to put it to an end.

Today we ask for your support in two ways:

1.) Share the countless ways U.S. militarism shows up in your daily life. Post a picture on social media of the many ways militarism shows up in your community and use the hashtag #DropTheMIC (military industrial complex). By using the hashtag on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, others will be able to search for like minded posts and see each way militarism shows up in communities across the country. If you don't have a picture feel free to post a relevant article or video with the same hashtag. The goal is to have our friends and family thinking about how widespread U.S. militarism is here at home and abroad.

2.) Contribute to our ongoing Indiegogo campaign to fund our new work areas. We are only $5,000 away from reaching our goal! It makes a big difference for our continued organizing and putting this work into the world. 

On a day that often feels more focused on hiding the wounds of war and ignoring the reasons we have so many veterans, we appreciate the fact that you are by our side in this struggle. 

In Solidarity,

Matt Howard
Co-Director
Iraq Veterans Against the War

Visiting the Reagan Raiders

Tami, Hart and I had a great visit today at Reagan HS during their single lunch hour. About 20 students completed the t-shirt challenge, and we appreciated students' responses to the questions on our challenge list.  Since Reagan HS is one of the Austin schools that may be able to change its name (Reagan was named for a Confederate Post Master General), we wondered what alternative names students might want to give their school, so we asked that in our poster question.  Several students suggested names that were acronyms for something.  Several also said they'd been studying the early US freedom movements, such as the abolition and suffrage movements, so their suggestions were based on those. Several also suggested their own names as possibilities.

Penny Poll results showed the highest percentage for the Education category (30% of the penny vote), followed by Health Care (25% of the vote), Environment (20%), Military (15%) and Humanitarian Aid (10%).

Our new t-shirt designs were popular, and we hope students will wear them with pride!

 We include Malala Yousafzai on our Peace Wheel of Fortune, and several students told us that there was a new mural of Malala on their campus -- which we saw as we were taking literature to the career room.  What a beautiful mural!  We also hope that students will see the new documentary film about Malala, "He Named Me Malala,"  a beautiful and insightful film.

New Malala mural in courtyard at Reagan HS, made by art students

Dedication of the mural to Malala

student mural artists

Thanks to Raiders students and staff for welcoming us to their campus today!

Scholarships available for immigrant students in Texas

Good info in this article by Joy Diaz of The Texas Standard and reported on KUT radio this week:

It’s college application season, and for many colleges the due date is next month. That means now is the time for writing essays, rounding up letters of recommendation and – lest we forget – figuring out how you’re gonna pay for a college education.

There are loans, of course, if you qualify. There are also scholarships. Typically, if you’re undocumented, you’d be on your own. But a contested executive order on deferred deportations, better known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, could mean money in the bank.

When Pedro Villalobos started college, DACA didn’t exist. “It was really hard to find scholarships just because most of them require that you be a citizen of this country or a legal permanent resident,” he says. “So, at a certain point when you are trying to find funding for college – as an undocumented student you lose hope – because before DACA there weren’t many options for you.”

Then, after Villalobos got his BA in 2012, President Obama issued an executive order that would prevent him from being deported. When he applied for a spot at the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and got in, most of his expenses were covered – and mostly through scholarships.

Foundations and benefactors, like former Washington Post CEO Don Graham, have put millions of dollars into a scholarship fund for immigrant students whose parents entered the country illegally.

There have been close to 500 Dream Scholars and they represent most every continent, including Latin America. But that’s a small number of people compared to the 665,000 students who are protected from deportation through DACA.

Cristina Jimenez is one of the founders of United We Dream. It’s a non-profit that helps connect immigrant students with resources. She says few students even know they have financial options.

“Scholarship programs are still limited, but they are available,” Jimenez says. “You have many schools that have opened up scholarship programs. Different states, organizations like MALDEF – for example – have been providing scholarships to undocumented students for a long time.”

As for Villalobos, if immigration laws do not change by graduation day next year, he won’t be able to work as an attorney in this country. Some may wonder if he’s wasting his time and scholarships.

“I see it as an investment in myself, as an investment in Texas and as an investment in the United States,” Villalobos says.

Villalobos’ parents recently became legal residents. They had waited 16 years for immigration authorities to process their paperwork. In that time, Pedro Villalobos aged-out of his parents’ application. He had to start his own – from scratch. He’s hoping it wont take another 16 years to process his paperwork.

Recruiters on AISD campuses must observe new limits

As we noted, last Monday, October 26, the AISD school board passed a new policy that will more tightly restrict access by military recruiters to students in our public schools in Austin.  The new policy is here.  A notice about this was included in a segment on KUT Austin public radio news today.

Our group first brought this proposal forward about a year ago after discovering that, of 3 reported cases, between 2008 and 2011, of local military recruiters charged in sexual assaults of area high school students,  only one of the cases had resulted in a conviction.  In the other two cases, which we researched through court documents, the recruiters had reportedly first met the students on AISD campuses, continued their contact through inappropriate texting, convinced the students to meet with them and then assaulted them off campus.  Reading the court records convinced us that serious crimes against underage students had been committed, but the investigations were dropped after numerous postponements, possibly because of reluctance by the victims to relive the trauma of the assaults.

Our group looked at other district policies around the country regarding recruiters in schools.  We had also noticed ways in our own district that recruiters were getting around the SR-290 opt-out box to obtain student contact information, either directly from the students, by telling them to write down their contact info on cards at their recruiting tables, or through administering the ASVAB test on campuses without parental input.  The new limits we proposed were all included in other cities' district policies and were chosen to directly address both the loopholes in the current recruiter policy and the very serious allegations of recruiter sexual abuse.

In our meetings with district staff, we stressed that sexual assault is a major problem within the military, and we believe that it stems from a military culture of sexism, tolerance of sexual violence and a history of retaliation against whistle-blowers.  The last several years have seen much more media attention to this entrenched problem, and we sincerely hope that the increased awareness, mostly achieved through the courage of survivors who have spoken out, will lead to change.  However, the failure of Congress to pass legislation that would have increased accountability by taking prosecution of crimes outside of the military chain of command makes us think that change will be slow in coming.  In the meantime, the serious problem of sexism and sexual assault in the military affects civilian institutions as well, including our public schools, as long as recruiting is allowed on campuses.

      

Great article by Seth and Scott, published in Education Week:

Published Online: October 27, 2015

Published in Print: October 28, 2015, as Do Military Recruiters Belong in Schools?

COMMENTARY

Do Military Recruiters Belong in Schools?

By Seth Kershner & Scott Harding

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The United States stands alone among Western nations in allowing military recruiters to work inside its educational system.Section 9528 of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act requires that public high schools give the military as much access to campuses and student contact information as is given to any other recruiter. However, University of Kansas anthropologist Brian Lagotte finds that school officials do not fully understand this policy and often provide military recruiters unrestricted access to their campuses. Many schools allow military recruiters to coach sports, serve as substitute teachers, chaperone school dances, and engage in other activities. In some cases, recruiters are such a regular presence in high schools that students and staff regard them as school employees.

The military does not advertise what it is doing in public schools. But for the past four years, we have been researching those who make it their business to closely monitor the actions of military personnel in schools: parents, students, military veterans, and citizens affiliated with the grassroots "counter recruitment" movement. Many of them told us that state education commissioners, district superintendents, school principals, and other policymakers react with surprise at their efforts to rid schools of the undue influence of military personnel. In fact, most public officials are unaware of the extent of the military's presence in education settings and the ways in which the Pentagon can access private data about high school students. Until now, there has been a lack of hard data describing the extent of military involvement in schools.

Last year, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the U.S. Army provided us with documents about recruiter activities in Connecticut high schools during the 2011-12 academic year.

—Getty

The data offer only a snapshot of what recruiters for one service branch—the Army—were doing in one state. Certain trends emerge that should be of concern to educators and parents everywhere, however.

At a number of Connecticut high schools, Army recruiters are present—in one form or another—on a weekly basis. This kind of blanket coverage could only be possible with the Army's enormous recruiting budget: $338 million in fiscal year 2013. In contrast, most college recruiters do not have these kinds of resources to be in schools with the same regularity.

The data also suggest that schools with a high proportion of low-income students serve as a magnet for the military. Take the example of two similarly sized high schools in two Hartford suburbs: Avon and Bloomfield. Army recruiters visited Avon High, where only 5 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, four times during the 2011-12 school year. Yet at Bloomfield High, where nearly half the students qualify for such assistance, recruiters made more than 10 times as many visits. Other examples of school-based recruiting efforts challenge widely held beliefs about equality of opportunity. If we are serious about promoting higher education to all students, why do some youths see far more khaki and camouflage than college brochures?

There's another reason to be alarmed about the largely unregulated presence of military recruiters in education settings. Research shows that teenagers are at a stage in their development when they are impulsive, apt to engage in risky behavior, and uniquely susceptible to persuasion. Hence, a number of participants in our study framed their opposition to school military recruiting as a form of child advocacy. The leading association of public-health scholars has also endorsed this narrative.

In 2012, citing the latest neuroscience research and underlining how the health risks of military service disproportionately impact the youngest recruits, the American Public Health Association passed a resolution urging schools to more closely regulate military-recruiter access. While it is unlikely that he was familiar with the scholarly literature, several years ago a New Haven 5th grader summed up this view in an interview with Junior Scholastic magazine: "If people are not allowed to drink alcohol until the age of 21," he said, "they should not be able to make a decision that could cost them their lives until at least that age." The military holds a different view.

For the military, access to high schools is all-important because, in the words of its own officer corps, youths represent their "target market" and high schools "the primary source of Army applicants." School access is essential to military recruiters precisely because that's where young people can be found five days a week. In fact, the Army's recruiter handbook notes that among key community institutions—churches, civic organizations, businesses—schools have the most significant "impact on recruiting."

"Most public officials are unaware of the extent of the military’s presence in education settings."

Given the way military recruiters rely on unfettered access to public schools and students, it would be unreasonable to expect them to voluntarily scale back their activities. But educators, parents, and activists have an important role to play in pushing for reform. Our research, supported by other scholars and community organizations, indicates that common sense is needed to protect youths from military recruiters and restore a sense of balance to the career choices being promoted to students.

If recruiters are to remain in schools, we suggest public school districts across the United States adopt the following policies:

• Districts should require military recruiters to remain in one part of the school only. In too many instances, they are allowed to roam the hallways in search of students, or often sit with students eating alone in the cafeteria. We think most school officials would balk if a recruiter from another organization expected such access. Military recruiters should be held to that same standard.

• Districts should limit recruitment visits to one per branch of the military per year. As shown in Connecticut, weekly visits by recruiters to individual schools are common. Students in public settings should not be overexposed to information about just one potential career path.

• Restricting recruiter visits to schools is important, but to make this policy effective, "visits" should be broadly defined to include any activity by a military recruiter in which student contact is made. This would include not only traditional table set-ups, but also activities like classroom presentations by military personnel.

• Districts should require recruiters to fully disclose the health risks of military service. Among the more than 800 Texas high school students who told researchers Adam McGlynn and Jessica Lavariega-Monforti that they had had contact with military recruiters, 86 percent said they were never told about the possible risks of military service. At the least, recruiters should be required to tell students that if they join the military, they may end up in combat.

Efforts to regulate the presence of recruiters invariably produce strong opposition. The military and veterans' groups claim that such sensible reforms are "anti-military" and undermine the ability to recruit new service members. But advocates, parents, and teachers who wish to protect students should not be intimidated. This is not about being for, or against, the military. It is about ensuring that high schools do not become de facto recruiting stations, and that all young people have equal access to educational opportunities.• To ensure these rules are followed, a designated military monitor should be present at all times when recruiters interact with students. Such a policy has been successfully implemented in the Seattle public schools, where the Parent Teacher and Student Association, or PTSA, assigns a parent to monitor the military during school visits by recruiters.

Seth Kershner is a freelance writer and researcher. Scott Harding is an associate professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work. Together, they have written extensively on the military's involvement in education. Their book Counter-Recruitment and the Campaign to Demilitarize Public Schools was published in September by Palgrave Macmillan.

New Policy for Recruiters on high school campuses in AISD

Yesterday, October 26, 2015, the AISD School Board passed the following policy regarding military recruiters in the schools.  This adds several new measures to the policy that has been in place since 2006.  Among them is requiring that all schools that administer the ASVAB test now use Option 8 in their use of the test results.  Option 8 in the ASVAB Counselor's Manual stipulates "No recruiter contact from this listing of student results.  Results not released to recruiting Military Services."  If students who take the ASVAB wish to use their results toward enlistment, they can do so on their own volition.

We thank AISD staff who met with us over the past year to move the process along, and we trust that the new policy will be communicated widely to recruiters, their command units, school counselors and all school staff who can provide oversight to make sure the policy is followed.

 The following guidelines shall apply to recruiters on District campuses:

1. All recruiters shall first report to the campus administrative office to obtain a visitor’s badge each time they visit school property. 

2. The principal shall designate specific areas on each campus for recruiting purposes. Recruiting may not occur at school athletic events or other school-sponsored events, unless specifically authorized by the principal. 

3. Recruiters shall not continue ongoing contact when a student makes it clear by speech or other conduct that contact with the recruiter is unwelcome. In no event may recruiters meet with a student under the age of 18 years off campus without the written consent submitted to a campus administrator by the student’s parent or guardian. 

4. Evidence of a parent’s or guardian’s intent to provide directory information upon request shall be respected. [See FL] 5. The Armed Serves Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test shall be administered according to the same terms and conditions as other aptitude tests administered within the District. District schools shall select “Option 8” on the ASVAB test prior to the administration of the ASVAB at the school to ensure consistency with the opt-out provisions for release of contact information to the military. 

6. Recruiting of any kind shall not be permitted at a time, place, and manner that disrupts classroom instruction. Recruiting in a classroom or other designated space shall be acceptable if it is at the invitation of authorized school personnel and part of a school-approved program. 

7. Schools shall allow information regarding recruiting, including recruiting by the military and those advocating alternatives to the military, to be made available to students in an equivalent manner and location. 

8. Recruiters shall not solicit student contact information directly from a student or require such information as a condition to participate in an activity or to receive an award or gift.

 If a visitor fails to comply with the general rules or guidelines set out in this policy, the principal or other campus administrator may deny the visitor access to the campus. If a military recruiter fails to comply with the guidelines set out in this policy, the principal or other campus administrator may contact the military recruiter's supervisor to report the failure to comply and request that such individual not return to the campus.