Schools Puzzled by NYCLU Charge Military Is Harassing Students

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The New York Sun

The executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Donna Lieberman, is accusing military recruiters in the city of harassing, intimidating, and abusing high school students.


Without providing specific examples of cases of abuse in the city, Ms. Lieberman accused military recruiters of using strong-arm tactics in schools in what she called an attempt “to meet the demands for more soldiers to fight an increasingly unpopular war.”


The accusations were met with a strong denial from military officials and puzzlement from school and city officials, who said they were not aware of any problems with recruiters.


Yesterday, the NYCLU unveiled what it described as a campaign to protect students from abusive recruiters. The campaign includes a Web site that encourages students to file complaints with the NYCLU if they have problems with recruiters, and contains legal information about the privacy rights of students and restrictions placed on the military during recruiting sessions. The Web site does not contain examples of abuse by recruiters.


“Students shouldn’t have to subject themselves to aggressive military recruitment efforts,” Ms. Lieberman told The New York Sun, saying students face “intimidation, harassment, and abuse.”


Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, schools receiving federal funding are required to give military recruiters access to names, addresses, and telephone listings of enrolled secondary students upon request. Schools are also required to offer military recruiters the same access to students that they give to university admissions officers. Parents or students may opt to block the release of the personal information.


A spokesman for Army Recruiting Command, Douglas Smith, said it would be “counterproductive” for army recruiters to bully students. “Obviously, anybody would know that we’re looking for a pleasant interaction with the applicant,” he said.


A spokeswoman for the city’s schools, Margie Feinberg, said the education department has “not heard of any specific instances” of complaints from students. Individual schools would handle complaints about recruiters, she said.


The principal of Midwood High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Steve Zwisohn, said he has not heard of any complaints from students and said he was “surprised” by the allegations against the recruiters. “We haven’t had any problems,” he said. Military recruiters, he said, are given the same access to students as university recruiters.


Asked about the NYCLU’s campaign, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday said, “When we have young men and women overseas fighting and dying for us so that we have the … opportunity to go to school and to express ourselves, I don’t know why anybody would be opposed to making sure all of our children understand the different opportunities.”


NYCLU officials say they do not oppose recruiters having access to schools but want to make sure that they are respecting student rights.


A former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a Village Voice columnist, Nat Hentoff, said the NYCLU needs to show evidence of coercion in the schools.


“This is a political, not a civil liberties, issue for them,” he said. “Unless they can show any kind of constitutional danger, what I see is a free exchange of speech” between the students and the recruiters.


Pressed for specific examples of abuse in the city, Ms. Lieberman mentioned a case upstate in which a student claimed to have been threatened with criminal charges after taking a batch of brochures from a military recruiter’s table.


A spokeswoman for the New York City Recruiting Battalion, Emily Gockley, said 300 recruiters visit schools in the five boroughs and Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Hudson, Essex, and Bergen counties.


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