The military gives low income youth skewed promises the economic life of the wealthy

My best friend from kindergarten through 8th grade fiercely believed in peace and nonviolence. In class she would always denounce war as stupid and pointless, and while she was always patriotic, she was never very supportive of the military. We parted ways after middle school but reconnected at her high school graduation party. I was shocked to learn that she had joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), a program that offers to partially pay for students’ college education in exchange for at least an eight-year commitment to the military after graduation. I couldn’t believe that the person who I grew up knowing as clearly anti-war was now planning to major in Arabic in preparation for a career in the military. What could be so enticing that one would so drastically change their values or consider doing something they may have never considered before? I must have looked visibly shocked because she tried to reassure me by telling me not to worry as she wouldn’t be shooting anyone. Instead, she said this was her way of making something of herself, and she needed a way to pay for college. My friend’s story isn’t unique. The military attracts the underprivileged, specifically young people from low-income families, since it is presented as a mechanism for gaining privilege and as a way to solve all of their economic problems. The military is not only selling a false promise, but it is also using predatory recruitment strategies that disproportionately target low-income youth. Military recruitment is predatory on a federally mandated level. As Philip Ruben Nava, an attorney and an advocate of counter-military recruitment, pointed out, “buried deep within” President Bush’s 2001 No Child Left Behind Act was a “scarcely debated and unrelated provision” that established a new condition that public high schools must provide military recruiters access to the personal information of all enrolled students in order to receive federal funds (Nava 463). This not only granted the military unprecedented access to public high schoolers by way of effectively forcing public schools to give student information to military recruiters, but it also gave recruiters much more access to the high schoolers themselves. The provision required schools to give the military as much access to campuses as is given to any other recruiter, such as college admissions officers and potential employers, for example. Upon the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act, public high schools legally became de facto recruiting stations where high school students are free game for military recruiters. As of 2006, Nava explains that there were “approximately fourteen thousand frontline recruiters nationwide with a quota of two recruits per month, which translates to an annual recruiting goal of over three hundred thousand” (466). These recruiters have such unrestricted access to high school campuses that, in the 51 words of Seth Kershner, freelance writer and researcher, and Scott Harding, associate professor and associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Connecticut School of Social Work, “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” (Kershner and Harding). In some schools, the military has become as integrated as academics and other school-related activities. Aside from this ridiculously unrestricted and unquestioned access that the military is allowed in schools, there is a predatory function that this new access entails. Bush’s provision gave equal access to all public schools; however, those that are most visited are low-income schools. Military recruiters disproportionately visit low-income schools over higher income schools. An Education Week study, based on documents about recruiter activities provided by the U.S. Army in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, looked at military recruitment in low-income public schools compared to high-income public schools in Connecticut during the 2011-12 academic year. Based on just the activities of recruiters for one service branch, the Army, the study found a concerning trend. As stated in the report, “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” (Kershner and Harding). The authors concluded that “The data suggests that schools with a high proportion of low-income students serve as a magnet for the military” (Kershner and Harding). Military recruiters are specifically targeting low-income youth, and this recruitment is working. Why wouldn’t it when, as the authors deduced, “some youths see far more khaki and camouflage than college brochures” (Kershner and Harding)? The Seattle Times reported in 2005 that “nearly half” of new recruits came “from lower-middle-class to poor households, according to new Pentagon data based on ZIP codes and census estimates of mean household income” (qtd. in Martin). The same data showed that nearly two-thirds of Army recruits in 2004 “came from counties in which median household income is below the U.S. median” (Martin). Seeing the military recruiters more often is not the only reason that low-income youth are swayed to enlist; it’s how the military presents itself and what it promises that really lures underprivileged youth to join. For the poor, the military is advertised as a way to gain privileges that the rich hold. Historically the poor have been disproportionately part of the military especially since the time of the Vietnam draft, which, as reported by former US Army doctor and author Ronald Glasser, “skewed conscription to the poor and disenfranchised, and away from those in positions of power, prestige, wealth, and privilege” (196). Glasser even compares the US military to the Roman Army where “not one general and… not one ground commander of any legion was from a family of wealth, privilege, or influence” and states that while “we may not be Rome 52 yet… it is beginning to seem that way to the units that we keep deploying again and again, as well as their families and loved ones, while all the rest of us go shopping” (193). But why don’t most upper-middle to upper class citizens feel a need to go to war? And, why do people like Vice President Dick Cheney, who received five deferments during the Vietnam War, feel like they have “other, more important things to do” than serve in the military (qtd. in Glasser 196)? The answer lies with privilege. The rich have privileges that the poor do not—namely, financial stability and the benefits that come with it. Being able to access and afford college, to obtain a respectable job as a college graduate, and to make something of themselves in civilian society is all accessible to the rich. They already have privilege. They don’t need to go to war to feel like they’ve gained it. But for the poor, the military advertises itself as the perfect opportunity to gain these privileges. Nick Martin, staff writer for the New Republic, asserts, “The paths that service members travel to the military are different, but there are base circumstances that often connect them: Being poor means a lack of options; being middleclass often means mounds of debt and instability. The military promises solutions to all of that” (Martin). At home, the military offers “fast-tracked citizenship, relief from the financial pressure of attending college [and] real employment prospects” (especially to those with parents who have lost jobs) in exchange for commitment to the military (Martin). Recruiters entice young, low-income students to join by saying that they will have the same opportunity to prove themselves and to make something of themselves as those who come from wealthier backgrounds. Recruiters also boast that the military is where the disadvantaged can overcome their economic lack of privilege and become American heroes. For low-income youth, becoming a soldier is seen as a way of leaping up the privilege hierarchy and feeling equal to those who are otherwise at a disproportionate advantage. They believe that they will gain the privilege they otherwise would not have by joining the military.