Ouster of Military Recruiters Shows School's Ignorance, Says Watchdog
by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
February 22, 2005
(AgapePress) - A conservative military watchdog says it is outrageous that several Army recruiters were forced to leave a college campus in Washington state recently when they were accosted by a group of angry students who oppose the war in Iraq.
On January 20, two U.S. Army recruiters on the campus of Seattle Central Community College were forced to leave campus under escort by campus security officers. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the two had been surrounded by "several hundred students" who "hurled insults and water bottles" as a demonstration of their disdain for the war in Iraq and their displeasure with the recruiters' presence on campus.
According to that report, one of the recruiters, Sgt. Jeffrey Due, claims that during the confrontation he was hit in the head with newspapers, and water bottles "whizzed by, pounding the vending machine and wall" behind him. There were no reports of injuries following what Associated Press describes as "a ten-minute standoff."
Elaine Donnelly is president of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent non-partisan organization that promotes sound military personnel policies in the armed forces. She says she is outraged at the recent incident in Seattle. "It shows the level of ignorance in that school," Donnelly says. "And I think the school ought to reassess its instruction and find out why these young people are behaving in such an outrageous and irresponsible way."
Since the altercation, a campus student group called "Students Against War" has launched a petition drive that is aimed at persuading school officials to order a halt to on-campus military recruiting. They point to a November ruling by the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stating that if a college opposes the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy barring homosexuals from serving in the armed forces, that school has a First Amendment right to protest by blocking access to military recruiters.
However, under the Solomon Amendment, the U.S. government can legally withhold federal funds from any college that refuses to allow military recruiters access to students. The Third Circuit's ruling last Fall opened the door for anti-recruiter protests. Donnelly says she is hopeful the Department of Defense will take action to reinstate the Solomon Amendment.
"Congress already did something about it," the CMR president says. "They passed legislation [the Solomon Amendment] -- and a court, in a rather convoluted decision, struck [it] down. As I understand it, DOD is going to appeal that ruling."
Donnelly adds that a "Sense of Congress" has also been issued, expressing lawmakers' displeasure with the ruling of the Third Circuit. "I don't think this issue is by any means over," she says.
Ivy-Headed Foolishness
The anti-military debate is not limited to small community colleges like that in Seattle. Sean McMeekin, writing for Boundless magazine, notes that opposition to on-campus ROTC programs exists in Ivy League schools as well -- and that both the military and the educational institutions suffer as a result.
"ROTC recruiters never tire of citing the Army's desperate need for the kinds of bright minds and 'independent thinkers' needed in today's mobile, high-tech military," McMeekin writes. "And yet many of the most promising candidates remain all but off limits to them."
Meanwhile, he continues, students at the Ivy League schools are immersed in an amoral environment that drives them further to the left.
"[T]he pampered students of elite institutions like Harvard and Yale drift ever further into an intellectual atmosphere of moral relativism where serious engagement with issues of national security is frowned upon," he says. The result, he says, is that prestigious universities downplay or eliminate altogether disciplines such as military history -- and in their place offer "increasingly frivolous 'majors' like gender or peace studies."
Such disciplines, he contends, make no effort to "disguise their contempt for patriotism, valor, honor, and all the values necessary to a well-functioning military."
