In early February, a group of local parents, teachers, students and counter-recruiting activists drew up plans for an ordinance that would restrict the access of military recruiters to minors.
The ordinance, called the Arcata Youth Protection Act, has been reviewed by city attorney Nancy Diamond. This week proponents will start collecting the 1,500 valid signatures needed for the ordinance to qualify for the November 2008 general election. The signatures are due by the middle of May.
Carl Stancil oversaw the writing of the ordinance. Stancil, an active member of Veterans for Peace, a national organization that seeks to put an end to war, knows from personal experience that protecting minors from military recruitment is a necessary and urgent issue.
In 1964, during the Vietnam War, Stancil, 22 at the time, received a letter from the Selective Service mandating him to report to the local recruiting center. Stancil knew he had no choice in the matter and decided to join the Navy. He figured it was the safest route to take. "I didn't have a clue, when I enlisted," Stancil said.
Ashley Samuels, a senior at Arcata High School, said that she feels both angry and confused when recruiters talk to her and her peers because military recruiters sensationalize the armed forces. Samuels emphasized that recruiters do not mention the consequences that follow enlistment.
Recruiters use peer pressure to get students to make a commitment to something they might still have questions about, Samuels said.
Samuels thinks that people under the age of 18 are not mature enough to make long-term decisions about their future. Young people are still thinking in the short term. "We are not equipped to think about consequences," she said.
Stancil said of his time in Vietnam, "I thought I was doing the right thing, I didn't have a clue about the killing that was involved. I didn't get a sense of the suffering."
Stancil was deployed to Vietnam in January of 1967. Onboard a naval destroyer, he worked with a carrier group. There he served for six months and never set foot on Vietnamese soil. After the death of his long-time partner 30 years later, and his subsequent retirement, the scale of Stancil's involvement in the war resurfaced. This began when he went back to Vietnam in 1996.
He joined the Vietnam Friendship Village Project, an organization dedicated to making reconciliations between veterans and survivors of biological warfare in Vietnam.
Today, Stancil works for the GI Rights Hotline, a counseling service for people who are dealing with military issues. He helps people understand their rights under military law.
"I am outraged by what recruiters are telling young people," Stancil said. And he hears it all the time on the hotline; callers tell him about all the broken promises that recruiters have made them. In the end, he has to tell them the simple fact that the recruiters lied. "And now they're stuck in the military," Stancil said.
Annie Rosen, an Arcata community member who advocates for local youth, participated in reviewing the language of the ordinance. Her input was instrumental in ensuring that the ordinance accurately conveyed that its goal is to protect Arcata's young people. From her experience as an educator, Rosen has witnessed recruiters unfairly using technology, such as interactive video games, to lure young people into enlisting in the military.
"The military, because they have so many resources, can, when they identify somebody that is potentially a recruit, [invest] money in that student every day," Rosen said. "They can offer them tutoring to get them through school, they can do all kinds of things that no college or vocational school can do. In that way the military begins to look like, for a lot of young people, their only option.".
While this ordinance doesn't address the lack of options for young people, it starts a conversation, between families and communities, about searching for those options, Rosen said. Proponents of the ordinance hope to spark dialogue about whether or not someone who can't vote or sign a legal contract without parental consent can be pressured into committing the rest of their lives to a single purpose.
"Eighteen is a fine age to begin asking young people whether or not they want to serve their country in this way, because believe it or not you serve your country when you are a welder and you serve your country when you are baker," Rosen said. "And you serve your country as well when you are a teacher or a nurse," she said.
Cathy Pauley works as a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Army's Sacramento Recruiting Battalion. Pauley said the military is just another option for young adults. "The military shouldn't be treated any different than other career choices. There are some adults who aren't ready to reach decisions like this, but then there are also juniors and seniors in high school who are ready to make these kinds of decisions," she said.
"We want to offer juniors and seniors ample access to the same information that we offer adults or some college students, so that they can make informed choices about their future," Pauley said. "It's not any different for colleges and universities approaching juniors and seniors in high school to recruit for their schools."
Dave Meserve, who spearheaded the Arcata Youth Protection Act, echoes Rosen's concerns about recruiters. "They are basically coming here to take our youth to fight their war," he said. Meserve maintains that the ordinance is separate from anti-war efforts in that it only seeks to protect youth from being baited into making a decision that has unimaginable consequences.
Stancil said, "It's really important that young people, and their parents and their counselors and their peers, understand what they're getting into before they stand in that line."
1 comments