OPINION To hear proponents of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) talk, it's a matter of personal choice for 14- and 15-year-olds to sign up for the Pentagon's military recruitment program, which is being phased out of San Francisco's public schools June 2009. The San Francisco Board of Education also recently voted to remove physical education credit from the program this school year. It had to: the retired military officers who teach the course don't meet the educational standards of state law, and the course doesn't meet state physical education standards.
Supporters of JROTC are taking the issue to the November ballot. Their initiative, albeit non-binding, would put San Franciscans on record as in support of the military program.
As Democratic clubs and other political organizations begin their endorsement process, progressives need to understand the importance of defeating this initiative. It's not a harmless measure. If it passes, the new school board can use it to reinstate JROTC. If it loses, it's less likely the board will change its course. Thankfully, last week the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) voted overwhelmingly not to endorse the measure.
JROTC is not summer camp or a harmless after-school activity. It is one more way the military finds bodies for its illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Denisha Williams can tell you that. The African American high school senior in Philadelphia told the City Paper that she left JROTC and opted out of the military having her contact info. It hasn't made any difference: "I have received phone calls, e-mail, three letters and a 15-minute videotape. I even received a phone call from a female recruiter asking if I was still interested in the Navy. I told her I wasn't and hung up. A week later I received another letter and the tape."
Capt. Daniel R. Gager, commander of the US Army recruiting station in south Philadelphia, said he and other recruiters were ordered by the US Recruiting Command to put more time and energy into recruiting high school upperclassmen such as Williams.
In San Francisco, at least 15 percent of the cadets have been placed in the program without their consent. It seems the military will do whatever it takes to get in front of our youngsters in our public schools.
Pressuring kids to join the military is wrong. International law says kids under 18 should not be recruited at all, and the ACLU agrees (see www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen). Recruiters in every high school and at every mall in this country break that law every day.
Nationally about 40 percent of JROTC kids end up in the military. In San Francisco, proponents claim only 2 percent go on to military careers. They are wrong. According to the school district, no tracking of JROTC students is done.
Please work to defeat Proposition V, the pro-JROTC initiative.
Mark Sanchez and Tommi Avicolli Mecca
Mark Sanchez is President of the San Francisco Board of Education and an eighth grade science teacher. Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical queer activist and writer whose regular columns appear at beyondchron.org.
SFUSD has an awful reputation with parents and is cited in two recent studies next to housing as the main reason families leave the district. Rather than waist energy and time with the JROTC the School Board should be promoting the many positives and trying to mimic the successes achieved by some schools across the district. It is unfortunate that the school board is being used as a political spring board; our children deserve advocates better than Mark Sanchez, Eric Mar and their ilk.
More broadly, I am confused by the source of these many statistics thrown about by all sides of this issue. I would ask Mr Sanchez and Mr Mecca to point to the source of their statistics; how do we know that 15% - that is, about one in six - of cadets are in JROTC against their will? Gentlemen, you have already stated the board of education does not track one set of statistics; where are these other statistics coming from?
Lastly, allow me to raise the issue of relevance. I have heard frequently that San Francisco's JROTC program is much different in tone from programs elsewhere; what reason do we have to believe that the experience of a young woman in Philadelphia is a reasonable reflection of the experience of a San Franciscan youth?
Furthermore, we have little reason to believe that the recruiter contacted her because of JROTC - many schools throughout the country allow military recruiters access to all students personal information, regardless of their involvement in a JROTC program; this was the case in my high school.
Finally, within the quote from the young woman, she says she was asked if she was "still interested in the Navy," implying she had, in fact, previously indicated an interest in joining the Navy. Are we to be so offended that a recruiter called a woman who had previously stated interest? If the recruiter went too far in persistently contacting the young woman, all we have learned is that recruiters - like telemarketers and political candidates - can be annoyingly aggressive in their sales pitch; in the end we know that this nagging persistence only undermines the objective of the caller. This does not speak to some unique evil of JROTC, but rather to the common nuisance of the overzealous salesman, and informs us not-at-all about the particular traits of San Francisco's JROTC branch.
The question of JROTC's involvement in our schools involves important ideas, and there are many legitimate opinions on the issue, but let us rely on relevant fact and serious consideration rather than unsourced numbers and small anecdotes about distant strangers to inform our reasoning.
But the fact is that the district does not track military recruitment. How could they? How would the district know if a JROTC cadet joins the military a year or two, or more, down the road? Only the military knows the real numbers -- and they brag openly that 40-50% of JROTC cadets are recruited.
Chrisp here, as elsewhere on the Bay Guardian blog, betrays the real motivation of the downtown crowd behind Proposition V. They are using the youth in attempt to create a wedge issue to bash progressive supervisorial candidates like Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez. Mar and Sanchez should be applauded for their courageous stand on getting military recruiters out of our schools.
Jordanp asks how we know that "15% -that is, about one in six - of cadets are in JROTC against their will?" We know because over 800 JROTC cadets participated in survey last year, and 15.6% said that they were "placed in the program without my consent."
The No on V campaign is endorsed by the San Francisco Democractic Party, the San Francisco Labor Council, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and the Bay Guardian, among many others. The Yes on V campaign is financed by the SF Chamber of Commerce, the SF Association of Realtors and the Republican Party.
Vote No on V.
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