YOU HAVE to feel for military recruiters, stuck patrolling parking lots and shopping malls in hopes of attracting America's youth to a life of discipline and early-morning exercise. They have a thankless job even in peacetime, but as the war in Iraq drags through another hot summer, few able-bodied young people seem eager to sign away their lives. Unfortunately, the desperation to meet monthly quotas has prompted recruiters to resort to bribes and manipulation of young people who are considered most vulnerable.
The military has traditionally promised higher education to high school students who are too poor to afford it; now, struggling students are also considered prime targets for enlistment. Students at the University of Vermont received a mass e-mail from a recruiter, promising that the Army would pay off their student loans. Wealthy students don't have to consider military service to finance their education; for poor students, the offer comes at a time when the real world seems most daunting.
The military also focuses their recruiting efforts on certain ethnicities, with a special focus on Latinos, a group that the military considers under-enlisted. College students are particularly open to ethnic profiling since the Department of Defense is currently compiling a database for recruiting purposes which includes the ethnicity of all high school and college students over the age of sixteen. Although students can opt out of the database, they can only do so by providing personal information to the Department of Defense for a separate file.
Since most young people would balk at an honest assessment of the future that awaits them in the military, recruiters have attempted to entice them with everything from t-shirts to climbing walls. In Chicago, one recruiter collected names and addresses for a free iPod raffle, adding each entry to a list of potential recruits. Although these gimmicks serve primarily to get young people's attention, not to secure actual enlistment, these advertising methods often result in participants giving out personal information which is later used to badger them by phone and in person.
Despite their best manipulative efforts, the military will not begin to reach their recruitment quotas until young people have faith that their service will be part of a meaningful mission. All of the free prizes and cash incentives cannot fool young people into thinking the military will be nothing but good times and bountiful reward. Unless we have a drastic change in policy, most new recruits are likely to end up in Iraq, a conflict that shows no signs of coming to an end.
It can't help that our commander-in-chief has embarked on a month-long vacation at a time when Iraq is supposedly a vital front in the war on terrorism. In response to a question about the insurgency, President Bush told reporters, "I think about Iraq every day. Every single day." Well, one would hope so. But the men and women who risk their lives every single day deserve a little more active engagement from their commander-in-chief. They deserve a leader who refuses to rest, let alone spend a leisurely month clearing brush, until they return home safely.
The unfortunate truth is that even in the worst of circumstances, we need strong, smart, capable young people to join the military. Those who protest the military preying on students don't want the nation to be defenseless. The volunteers must come from somewhere, and as college students are discouraged from enlistment, impoverished high school dropouts are taking their place.
Whether we have a draft or a volunteer military, the result is the same: There are people are serving in Iraq who would rather be in school, home with their families or doing just about anything besides patrolling the desert in unbearable heat.
At the very least, we owe honesty to the people who serve our country in uniform. Stop insulting their intelligence with entertaining games and the chance of a free iPod. Anyone with the maturity to sign up for military service deserves a serious discussion about the commitment that he or she is about to undertake.
Cari Lynn Hennessy's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at chennessy@cavalierdaily.com.
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