Analyst: Despite Law Profs' Arguments, Military Careers Still Attractive to Students
by Chad Groening
March 7, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A retired Army officer and national defense analyst says he's pleased with Monday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Solomon Amendment which allows military recruiters to have access to any university that takes federal money.
The high court, on a unanimous vote, threw out a challenge filed by law school professors who oppose the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy dealing with homosexuals in the military. The professors, many of whose universities receive federal tax dollars, claimed the very presence of military recruiters on campus was an infringement on their free-speech rights. But Chief Justice John Roberts evidently detected some hypocrisy in the position taken by those challenging the amendment, noting, "What you're saying is, this is a message we believe in strongly -- but we don't believe in it to the detriment of $100 million."
According to Lt. Col. (Ret.) Bob Maginnis, not everyone on those campuses agreed with the ban on recruiters. He says some "headstrong" college campuses -- notably in the Northeast and among those from the "far left" of the political spectrum -- were working especially hard to prevent recruiters from gaining on-campus access to students. "And yet," says Maginnis, "there was no indication that there weren't people on the campuses who wanted to hear from recruiters."
In fact, says Maginnis, his sources indicate that among underclassmen there seems to be a genuine interest in the military. "It wasn't just the law schools [where recruiters were contacting students] -- it was the entire campus," he notes. "[T]he military tells me that a large number of [students] -- especially sophomores and juniors -- really think about the military as an alternative place that they can certainly build up some college tuition money and, in some cases, join ROTC and so forth."
The retired Army officer says the law professors' argument that their free-speech rights were being violated does not hold water. He says just because a university allows a certain type of representative on campus does not mean that the school agrees with that person's or that group's viewpoint.
"[T]his is a smart move by the unanimous Supreme Court decision," he adds. Maginnis points out that he helped to get the Solomon Amendment through Congress in the mid-1990s. "To uphold a law that I personally worked at getting passed ... validates the wisdom of all the effort that we went through."
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
