Students should opt out of military ad campaign

It’s back to school time. High school students and their parents may not know that “No Child Left Behind” requires high schools to turn over private information to military recruiters and that then that information is put into a database of approximately 30 million 16- to 25-year-olds. Information in that database includes names, addresses, e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, ethnicities, Social Security numbers, extracurricular activities and areas of study. This information is updated daily and distributed monthly to the armed services for recruitment purposes.

High school students and their parents may not know that the military spends billions of dollars on advertising and recruitment. Multi-media recruitment techniques such as M-16 rifle simulators, “Army cinema vans,” and mobile rock-climbing walls are all used to the militaries advantage. Recruiters are professionally trained in telemarketing and salesmanship and use sophisticated techniques to identify likely schools and prospective recruits.

In these tough economic times, the military might be able to easily market itself to you or your child, convincing you that it is the best, if not only option.

If you don’t want to be, or you don’t want your child to be part of this advertising campaign you can “opt out”  by filling out and returning two “opt out” forms which should be readily available at your high school. One prevents the school district from releasing private information and one prevents the Pentagon from using any information it may have already received for marketing purposes.

PARISE WHITLEY

Careywood