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The Cincinnati Beacon
Military Recruiter Horror Story
Friday, August 03, 2007
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Yesterday, I noticed this post at the CityBeat blogs, calling for anyone with a military recruiter horror story to contact the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC). The blog entry explains, “ IJPC is asking students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors and others for their stories about encounters with aggressive military recruiters. E-mail your stories to
or call Kristen or Julie at .” It just so happens I’ve had some experience with military recruiters bending the rules of engagement with high school students, so I just called to share my observations. Please consider doing the same, if you know anything!
A few years back, when I worked for an area Catholic high school, there were some recruiters who consistently bent the rules of engagement for talking with students.
As I understand the game, recruiters are allowed to set up tables in the cafeteria. They are allowed to answer any questions if students approach them, and they are allowed to ask for names and other information once a student begins the line of inquiry.
Recruiters are not, however, supposed to approach students first. And it makes sense, if you think about it. That’s the line in the sand, to prevent recruiters from harassing students, profiling them, and so forth.
I started noticing that the recruiters would play games with this rule. For example, if a group of guys approached the pop machines, the recruiters would coincidentally always get thirsty at that same moment. They’d make eye contact with a kid, and if the kid said something like “Hi,” or “What’s up”—as is typical when you make eye contact with some high school boys—the recruiters would take that as an open invitation to engage.
Sometimes, they would pretend to be interested in news posted on the bulletin board on the other side of the cafeteria. They would slowly walk towards it, trying to make eye contact the whole walk back there.
After some colleagues started complaining, and after the principal told me there was nothing he could do about it, I decided to start following the recruiters around whenever they would leave their table. This made them very uncomfortable! After two days, they stopped with that game.
Then they had a new idea. They brought these keychains that were free giveaways. At the end of lunch, they would place themselves in the flow of traffic leaving the cafeteria, trying to hand out keychains, playing the eye contact game again. I used to lean against the door jam, staring at them until they returned to their tables.
I know… Some of you will go off how this is no big deal. But the bottom line is that these recruiters broke the rules, and those rules exist to protect kids from the horror stories you may have heard about REALLY aggressive recruiters.
I’ll be eager to see the full IJPC report.
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