MILITARY RECRUITING Flap over targeting students heats up BY TE-PING CHEN

Four years after Congress passed the divisive No Child Left Behind Act, controversy surrounding one of its lesser-known provisions is simmering in Rhode Island.

NCLB requires any federally funded school to grant military recruiters access to students’ names and contact information — that is, unless a parent specifically requests their child’s privacy be protected. The law permits parents to release their child’s information only to colleges and non-military prospective employers, but according to a statewide survey by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Rhode Island chapter, school districts are failing to offer families their full legal options. Meanwhile, in Providence, where forms go home via students’ backpacks or scattered mailings; no district-wide "opt-out" policy currently exists.

Reuters reported last month that the Army, for the first time in six years, fell short of its annual recruiting goal. A 2004 US Army Recruiting Command handbook calls school recruiting "critical to both short-term and long-term recruiting success." So perhaps it’s no surprise that the ACLU’s Steve Brown observes a "greater emphasis on obtaining and making use of the student directory information to try and encourage recruitment."

Groups like the American Friends Service Committee are attempting to rectify Providence’s lack of a firm policy on military recruitment. "I think it’s a very timely issue," says School Board member Umberto Crenca. "Young people being recruited and sent to Iraq as we speak — it’d be irresponsible to wait another year."

While critics allege that military recruiters support a backdoor, economic draft, Master Sergeant Anthony Rebello of the Army National Guard, who has two children enrolled in Parkview Middle School, disagrees. "There are some people who support the military," he says. "What we’re here to do is give students another option."

Advocates for a district policy cite the need for increased consistency in communication and a clearer "opt-out" form, in part since only 10.7 percent of parents of opted to withhold their child’s information in 2004. AFSC organizer Andrew Sawtelle argues that such numbers are artificially low. "If it were made very clear what was actually going on, that number would be a lot higher," he says.

Although James DiCosta, a freshman at Hope Leadership School, says he and his friends never heard about any "opt-out" form, he doesn’t really care. "It’s a white man’s world anyway," he says. "We can’t fight for that."

Met High School senior Vimar Rodriguez saw the form, but said she’d ignored it, explaining she wanted her information kept private. Told that she actually had to return the form to have her information protected, she paused. "I gotta find that form," she said.