TESTIMONY to the members of the New Jersey State Board of Education, from
A. B., Associate Director, Coalition for Peace Action.

Good Afternoon Honorable members of the NJ State Board of Education. My name
is A. B. I am the Associate Director of the Princeton-based Coalition for
Peace Action and parent of a Princeton High School student. I would like to address
another important issue concerning the appropriate role of military recruiters in 
our public schools.

We recommend the following amendment to N.J.A.C. 6A:32-7.1 (g) 6. School
districts must be required to provide equal, but not preferred access to military
recruiters. Preferred access is inconsistent with the spirit of N.J.S.A. 18A:36-19.1 
which requires local school districts to provide military recruiters the same access 
to school facilities as educational and occupational recruiters.

It is a charge of the State Board of Education and local school boards
throughout the state of New Jersey to provide a safe and secure environment for our 
children in schools, where privacy rights are protected and educational objectives 
are not compromised. Our state and federal laws require that schools provide the 
military EQUAL access to our young people. However, many school districts have given 
military recruiters carte blanche to visit schools as frequently as they would like. 
These recruiters often set up tables in hallways and cafeterias, and have access to 
all students, including 6th, 7 th & 8 th graders when those grades are included in 
that school. In some schools recruiters are reported to be talking to students in the 
halls, classes, music and band rooms, and on sports fields. Recruiters are usually 
unsupervised, which means they can and do approach any student in school without that
student’s permission, and without the knowledge or permission of that student’s parents 
or guardians. Colleges and employers are generally invited into the school once
or twice a year to meet with students who express interest in meeting them, and in a
pre-assigned area or recruitment forum, and appointments are made in advance with the 
guidance office.

Students and parents are entitled to an educational environment free of
unmonitored interruption by personnel not associated with the educational staff 
of that school or district, which includes military recruiters. Preferred access 
for military recruiters compromises our schools’ most important and central 
mission: to provide an exemplary education. The unmonitored and dominant presence 
of military recruiters in our schools sends a message of complicity, and a tacit 
understanding that school personnel support the preferred status of military to 
other recruiters. We do not dispute that the military has a legal right to equal
access to our children as colleges and universities. But our schools should
not be favoring the military over higher education or other forms of employment.

In a time of war, the consequences of joining the military are especially grave. 
Because of that, recruitment is far more challenging, and recruiters have become
increasingly aggressive. Cases of unethical and sometimes illegal practices, 
including falsified documents and distortions of the truth, are becoming more and 
more common, and articles and programs in the media are documenting them, and 
available in the public domain. Given the reality of this situation, and because 
the State Board of Education has a statutory obligation to establish equal, and 
not preferred access to recruiters, we urge the Board to be much more specific 
in offering guidelines to local districts to meet their legal obligation to open 
the schools to military recruiters, but to not allow a laissez faire practice that 
infringes on the privacy rights of many students throughout the state.

Once again, we recommend the following amendment to N.J.A.C. 6A:32-7.1 (g)
6. School districts must be required to provide equal, but not preferred access to
military recruiters. Preferred access is inconsistent with the spirit of N.J.S.A. 
18A:36-19.1 and promotes the kind of pressured and persistent, even coercive, 
contact with students that is inconsistent with an educational environment, and 
jeopardizes our childrens’ right to privacy.

On a personal note, my daughter, a high school senior, opted out of the military 
contact list last year and remains on that list at her high school. Those signatures –
both mine and that of my daughter – are meaningless within the high school halls. 
Military recruiters have been free to approach her and her friends, hand them their 
card or other literature, and interrupt their school day with their message of 
enlistment. While she has many other options, it must be noted here that the military 
targets some of the most vulnerable of our children, those who believe they have no 
other options. Guidelines that assist in creating true equal access for ALL recruiters, 
as mandated by law, send a clear message of impartiality and fairness from the State 
Board, and protect the rights of privacy for parents and students.

Thank you.
Respectfully submitted,
A. B.

Working for the global abolition of nuclear weapons, a peace economy, and a
halt to weapons trafficking