Questions raised about Army recruiter's tactics at MHS

For the past five years, visits by military recruiters have become commonplace at high schools around the country, as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But last week’s visit by an Army recruiter to Marblehead High broke from the norm both in the excitement it created among the students and the questions it has left with some parents.

Sgt. Elizabeth Hill is no stranger to the MHS cafeteria, according to Principal John Ziergiebel. She visits about once per term and, dressed in fatigues and bubbling with enthusiasm, she generally has spawned cheers as she races from table to table, handing out book covers and pencils, along with promotional materials for the military.

Last Thursday, she had a different type of trinket, however. She brought along a device about the size of a fax machine that enabled her to create personalized military dog tags for anyone who wanted one. The dog tags created quite a buzz. Once a few students began showing off their new jewelry, many others began to queue up as well.

The problem, says parent Lori Ehrlich, is that students were required to fill out a card with their contact information in order to receive the dog tag. Whether intentional or unintentional, the result, Ehrlich fears, is that some parents’ wishes about sharing their contact information with military recruiters may have been circumvented.

A provision in the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to provide access to students’ names, addresses and phone numbers. The law guarantees to military recruiters “the same access to secondary school students as is provided generally to colleges and prospective employers.” But the law also allows parents to “opt out” of having the school supply their children’s information, with most schools, including MHS, sending home notices at the start of the school year informing parents of their rights.

Failure to comply with the law is no small matter, according to Superintendent Phil Devaux, as it would jeopardize a district’s federal revenue sources, including money administered by the state.

Upon notifying Devaux of the situation, Ehrlich said he acted swiftly and appropriately to demand the return of the cards, a request to which Hill complied. Still, Ehrlich said no one has been able to assure her that the names had not been entered into a database prior to their return. Ziergiebel said that while he has generally had very good relationships with military recruiters and he is generally happy to welcome them into the school, hearing about the cards raised some concerns. He noted that any recruiter wishing to have a list of contact information for the school’s students, minus those whose parents had opted out, merely need to make such a request.

J.C. Allard, the chief of public affairs for the Army’s New England Recruiting Battalion, said Wednesday that while he had not spoken to Hill about the specifics of the incident, filling out of “lead cards” is a common practice that takes part in high schools every day. He said the process of filling out cards, which will also involve some conversation between student and recruiter, provides recruiters with additional information not available on a simple student roster, such as career aspirations and areas of the country the student might someday like to live. He credited Sgt. Hill with voluntarily returning the cards in the interest of maintaining good relations with the school, something he felt she was “not really obliged to do.”

He said he was surprised to hear that the practice had created any controversy, as it goes on regularly in schools throughout the area and had never caused any concern. He said that when a student fills out a lead card, the recruiter would generally assume that there is some level of interest in the Army.

Moreover, he described opting out of releasing contact information to be a “very conscious decision,” and one not made capriciously. As a result, he expected parents would generally discuss the decision with their children “to make sure we’re on the same sheet of music.” He found it hard to believe that the dog tag would be so desirable as to override a family’s decision to opt out. He added that, to his knowledge, none of the information on the Marblehead cards had been retained. Nonetheless, as is always the case, all a family has to do to get its name off a recruiter’s list is ask, he said.

Devaux downplayed the significance of the event, given that Marblehead is a district that sends about 98 percent of its graduates off to college and, as such, rarely gets calls from recruiters. Ziergiebel noted, however, that there is a core of students who is “quite interested” and for whom the military can be a “great career option.”

Ziergiebel said recruiters would continue to be welcomed into the school but also wanted to be sure that recruiters were not causing the efficacy of the school’s opt-out form to be “falsely represented.”

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