When the phone rings many Skyline students expect it to be their friends. What they don’t realize is that it could be a military recruiter on the other end of the line, waiting to enlist them.
Skyline students are fed up with this:”It [phone calls from recruiters] gets really annoying” Skyline student Tamer Abualhsan, 19, said. “They call too many times.”
Getting called by the armed forces happens a lot to Skyline students. Some students believe that they will only be called if they voluntarily sign up for it.
But, what most students don’t know is that federal law requires all schools which receive federal aid to provide military services with all the students’ directory information.
The Solomon Amendment, according to a packet released by Sherri Hancock, dean of enrollment services, was passed by Congress in 1996. This law was passed because Congress believed that if colleges receive federal help, then they should support the Department of Defense.
Military services ask for a list once a semester; and the list can be released to only one service.
The information they are allowed to request is: full name, telephone number, address, age, class level, academic major, and place of birth, degrees received, and the most recent school attended. Military services are not allowed to request information about the students’ social security number, ethnicity, or religion.
All students, seventeen and older, who are enrolled with at least one credit per semester, are to be on the list, whether they receive financial aid or not. This law is unknown to many students, and the reason is because the military advise colleges not to release any information about the Solomon Amendment. This means that any student can get military calls at anytime.
Although, Skyline has received many student complaints about recruitment calls; there is nothing the school can do to stop it. If schools refuse to cooperate with military services, there is a chance of loosing health and human services, labor, education, and transportation funds.
However, there is a way for students to stop the military from calling them. To do this, students must go to the Admissions and Records Center, and request an application to withhold their directory information. There are many other ways that the military can get students’ information, and voluntary release of information is believed to be one the most common.
Michael Moynihan, a Sociology teacher and a member of the Academic Senate, strongly believes that an alternate way for the military to get students’ information is through the questionnaires and surveys they fill out.
During randomly chosen classes students get surveys. They can often ask about personal interest, educational plans, or school activities. Students voluntarily fill these surveys out with even more information than what the military requests, without knowing the purpose or use of the information.
According to Moynihan, in April of 2007, a number of faculty members received a questionnaire to distribute to their students, which asked many personal questions. Moynihan decided to research the company and he learned that the information students voluntarily fill out can be sold for many different purposes.
This brings up an important issue of credibility: students tend to believe and look up to their teachers, and if these surveys are given by their teachers, there is a bigger chance of trusting these surveys. If students’ information is used for the wrong purpose, it reduces the credibility of teachers.
Students have to be really careful with all the surveys and questionnaires they fill out. If students do not want to deal with any calls from the military, then they should not fill out anything with their personal information in it.
Calls from the military do not necessarily mean that students are going to war; but, students are annoyed by these calls. It is up to one’s critique to either put at risk the federal help that schools get; or to just simply say “No” when a call is received.
