Evanston has confronted some big ticket issues in recent weeks: war in Iraq, the USA Patriot Act. Now military recruitment in high schools can be added to the list.

Concerned community members turned out at Evanston Township High School District 202’s board meeting Monday night to question the military recruitment clause of the No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush in January 2001. Buried in the 670-page legislation is Section 9528, which gives the Pentagon the ability to access directories of students’ names, addresses and phone numbers in order to facilitate recruitment. Moreover, all schools receiving federal funding must hand over lists of juniors and seniors or be cut off from the government’s purse.

Parents may still chose to take their children off the list though a written request. ETHS has gone to considerable lengths to inform parents of this option, first sending out notice in a parents’ newsletter in November and again in a letter in January. ETHS’s Web site also includes a link explaining the law’s requirements and allowing parents to opt out.

But the “opting out” option is one of the main concerns with the clause. Prior to the act’s passage, students’ personal information was governed by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Anita Ramasastry, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle writes at Findlaw.com: “It provided that parents must give written consent prior to disclosure of personal student data. In short, it instituted an ‘opt in,’ not an ‘opt out’ system. And the ‘opt in,’ appropriately, was formal and written.” Students’ personal information, she explains, was never released to military recruiters without parental consent — until now.

Before the No Child Left Behind Act, one-third of American high schools refused to give military recruiters students’ contact information or access to campus because they felt it was inappropriate to promote military service, according to Common Dreams News Center.

And this gets at the heart of the matter. Parents and residents at Monday’s meeting said the real issue with the recruitment clause is that it goes against education’s primary purpose: to keep kids alive and healthy, and to prepare them to make good choices.

Food for thought: A memo circulated by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation notes that the law helps the military in its current practice of targeting minority and economically disadvantaged communities for recruitment — although these demographics are more likely to be passed over for promotions and assigned to menial jobs within the services.

Schools are caught between a rock and a hard place on this issue. They are put in the position of consenting to previously unlawful privacy invasions, or going it alone on their budgets — something few, if any, schools would be willing to do. District 202 Superintendent Allan Alson said ETHS will comply with the law but will consider how best to respond to pressure from parents and Neighbors for Peace to give alternative, peaceful options.

“The high school need only meet the letter of the law,” Anya Cordell, a member of Neighbors for Peace, said Monday night. “(They) don’t need to do anything to further encourage military involvement.”

Perhaps the most frightening issue is the precedent of military involvement in education that this law sets.

Let’s just hope recruitment is the limit.

Deputy City Editor Liz Raap is a Medill senior. She can be reached at [email protected].