Across the street from the College Place Walmart, there are four separate recruitment offices for the United States Armed Forces. Though the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force each recruit in this area, they don’t see much interest from Whitman students.
“When I came here, I said I’d probably never put anyone from Whitman in the Navy,” said Navy Recruiter-in-Charge Mathew Haney.
Ironically, his first recruit ended up being a Whitman graduate, but his overall perception of Whitman students was correct: Few go into the military.
Economic reasons could be behind this lack of interest. According to Not Your Soldier: an advocacy group working to end recruitment practices targeted at low-income students: 71 percent of black recruits, 65 percent of Latino recruits and 58 percent of white recruits come from below median-income households. While Whitman offers financial aid to its students, the majority don’t come from low-income backgrounds.
Haney believes the lack of interested Whitman students has more to do with students’ political leanings.
“Whitman has always been known as a predominantly liberal college,” he said.
In addition, he said many students attending four-year colleges already have career plans. Although interest is higher at Walla Walla University, Haney said this is because many students there are planning to go to medical school, and the Navy will pay for these classes in exchange for six years of service.
The Student Engagement Center allows the military to post job opportunities for students. However, Director Susan Buchanan says she tries to dissuade recruiters from attending career fairs.
“I don’t disallow them,” she said. “I’ve just explained to them that it probably wouldn’t be a positive experience.”
She too attributes Whitman’s lack of interest in military service to the liberal beliefs held by most of the student body.
In spite of the relative lack of recruiter presence at Whitman, ASWC adopted a resolution in 2005 stating that they were opposed to recruitment on campus. The opposition was based on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which prohibits openly gay and lesbian people from serving. This policy was passed in 1993 during the Clinton Administration in an attempt to provide a compromise between a 1982 ban on gays and lesbians in the military and demands from civil rights groups to allow anyone to serve.
ASWC’s resolution also protested against the Solomon Amendment, a 1995 law which states that any school not allowing recruiters access to campus must forfeit federal funding. Although the Solomon Amendment was challenged by many law schools in 2002, a Supreme Court ruling upheld the law in 2006.
Whitman alumnus Sam Tate ’09, who recently completed Officer Candidate School, believes that the ASWC resolution is unfair to the military.
“If you choose not to join the military because of a policy like ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ you can make that choice,” he said. “I think it’s a [resolution] that kind of insults the student.”
Tate personally believes that “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” should be repealed, but he says that it doesn’t effect his overall opinion of the military.
First-year Kathryn Collins agreed that the ASWC resolution was unnecessary. She came to Whitman from a high school where many students entered the armed forces after graduating.
“We should respect other people’s decisions about whether or not the military is correct for them,” she said. “The military is a good, viable education option for people.”
However, some Whitman students are very opposed to recruitment on campus. A recent e-mail sent out by the Student Engagement Center listing a Navy job prompted junior Lissa Erickson to ask the Center to stop advertising for the military. She cited the military’s “unethical practices at home and across the globe” and the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirement that schools release student contact information to the military as reasons for her objection.
In spite of the debate surrounding the military’s level of involvement at Whitman, the bottom line is that most students are not interested in joining.
“We’re not going out [to Whitman] and trying to find lots of people,” said Haney.
Whether or not “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is repealed, that fact is unlikely to change.
Captain Eric Tausch • Mar 22, 2010 at 7:31 pm
Hi,
I am writing to ask why you did not publish my response to Vladimir, which was submitted here nearly three weeks ago. I feel that a young man who took the time to submit a response certainly deserves the respect of having his views acknowledged, so I would sincerely appreciated you publishing the response I submitted since my prior criticism was the focus of his comments.
Thanks,
Capt Tausch
Webmaster • Mar 29, 2010 at 8:56 pm
I’m afraid we never received your reply. Would you mind submitting it again?
Thanks!
Rebecca Fish
Webmaster, The Pioneer
vladimir • Mar 5, 2010 at 7:08 pm
What you call “liberalism” has been reduced as much to propaganda as the U.S. Marine Corps has been reduced to a socio-political platform for close-minded ideologies. Your, sir, are part of the most physically destructive and detrimentally elitist Marxist Ideological State Apparatus in the Western world. You are proselytizing a “think for yourself” motto to Whitman students that is no different than your former commander-in-chief’s proselytization of “democracy” to all corners of the globe. I have “walked across the street” to meet with your recruiters. They, quite frankly, turned me into a pacifist. They don’t value critical inquiry, intellectualism, and homosexuality, three qualities that led me to enroll at Whitman College. Your suggestion that this newspaper is propagandizing liberalism and should utilize socially scientific “data” to support the claim that “most students are not interested in joining” the military is as naïve as it is pathetic. I challenge you and your fellow service members to walk across the street and politely ask any journalist if they can spare a few moments to enlighten you. This article is not what is “out of line,” sir, you are.
Captain Eric Tausch, US Marines • Mar 5, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Thanks for publishing such an interesting article, but it sounds a lot like your publication is telling its readers what to think and how to act. Has liberalism been reduced to propaganda?
Having never been to Whitman, I can’t possibly synopsize the opinions or political views of its students. I’d actually challenge that this article is also out of line in trying to do the same without substantiation. I must ask what studies were conducted by your staff regarding the statement “MOST STUDENTS ARE NOT INTERESTED in joining” [emphasis added]. Really? Did you ask most students? I certainly would understand that most students are not joining, but “not interested” in joining?
Despite perceptions of the military, I am still “liberal” after 23 years as a US Marine journalist and public relations officer. The beauty of liberalism is respecting and encouraging people to think for themselves. Is it ethical, or even intelligent, to assume that your students would not be interested in military service simply because you consider your school “liberal?†Is it ethical for faculty to increase a student body’s ignorance by not enthusiastically presenting military service as an available option among all others? Education without boundaries used to be a university’s primary focus; I hope our campuses have not been reduced to socio-political platforms for close-minded ideologies.
When I do finally have the opportunity to visit your beautiful campus, I hope I’ll find a student body that is not guided by unsubstantiated claims that attempt to shape them into someone else’s idea of liberal automatons. Rather, I hope to be greeted by students who, quite frankly, were equipped by parents, coaches, and educators to think for themselves and take responsibility for their words and actions.
Until that time, I challenge every student who is not personally familiar with military service to walk across the street and politely ask any of those recruiters if they can spare a few moments to enlighten you.
Sincerely,
Captain Eric Tausch
U.S. Marine Corps