Petrelis Files

Last US High School Refusing Army Recruiters Changes Policy

(One of many recent creative progressive pro-peace demonstrations in Berkeley.)

On Friday night I went to the Pacific Film Archive to catch a screening of a Peter Greenaway's breakthrough film "The Draughtsman's Contract" from 1983 and on my way to the theatre, I picked up a copy of the Berkeley Daily Planet, to catch up on the local politics and art scenes.

In it was a long story about a very depressing development, one that I would never have expected to read about from the People's Republic of Berkeley.

The administration for the last American high school not cooperating with the federal government and allowing military recruiters access to contact information to potential new recruits for the armed forces, has reversed its policy on the matter.

From the Berkeley Daily Planet:

Berkeley High School administrators informed students this week about a change in board policy that requires all juniors and seniors who do not want their names and addresses released to the U.S. military for recruitment purposes to sign an “opt-out” form.

Prior to this, Berkeley High had simply handed over names and addresses of students who had “opted in” or wanted to receive information from recruiters.

But under threat of losing millions of dollars in federal funds, the Berkeley school board decided earlier this month on the change.

According to the federal No Child Left Behind act (NCLB), school districts must provide the military with the names and addresses of all juniors and seniors for recruiting purposes unless there is a signed letter from the parents or the student indicating that they are “opting out” and do not want information released.

Berkeley High was the last high school in the country to acquiesce to this policy. . .

The district’s belief had been that by applying the same restrictions of access to student information to all organizations, it would be able to guard privacy and shield students from unwanted solicitations as well as military recruitment, unless desired.

School district superintendent Michele Lawrence said she had sent out a letter to the Berkeley High community on May 11 about this change. . .

Lawrence said that the school board had held its position all along because of their commitment to protecting students from “some of the obvious ramifications of an open release of information, and especially to the military given our country’s political climate.”

The situation escalated when the undersecretary of defense called to inform her that BHS was the only school in the nation not to comply with this particular provision. . .

In the back of my head I held on to the naive belief that there was real hope for resisting full cooperation with the Bush war machine, because this bastion of progressive citizens and thinking was able to keep out military recruiters.

No more, and if Berkeley, California, of all places, can't continue to give us a glimmer of hope, and hard-core resistance to outrageous Bush machinations to keep feeding his lost war for oil profits in Iraq, I'm simply forced to look elsewhere for examples of patriotic Americans refusing to go along with the current White House administration.

(UC Berkeley students protesting for de-militarizing the campus)