Military recruitment beneficial to students

Mubarak Dahir, a columnist for the gay and lesbian newspaper Bay Windows, wrote that sometimes, "While we expunge one prejudice, we let another fester unchallenged." Sadly, this is precisely what has happened with the well-intentioned protest against the U.S. military led by groups from the Penn Law School.

The target of the protest is the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1993, the policy stipulates that gays and lesbians can serve in the U.S. Armed Forces only if they do not reveal their sexual orientation. In practice, the policy discourages gay individuals from joining the USAF.

I should mention that I think "don't ask, don't tell" is a stupid policy. In addition to deterring gay and lesbian would-be soldiers, the policy hurts the military by reducing its pool of applicants. Moreover, openly gay soldiers successfully serve in the armies of many other countries, including Britain, Australia and Israel, and thus could certainly participate in the U.S. Army.

In recognition of this, 21 Penn Law professors and six students filed a suit against the Department of Defense in Burbank v. Rumsfeld. And on Friday, an anti-military protest was launched by Lambda Law, a law student group that advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.

The problem is that the suit and the protest do not directly address "don't ask, don't tell." Rather, they try to halt military recruiting on campus.

A bit of background: At Penn, the law school's Career Planning and Placement Office only makes its full services available to employers who comply with a policy forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, age, national origin, disability or sexual orientation. Because the military was found to be in violation of this policy, it was not granted the same recruiting opportunities as other employers.

In response, the government threatened to withdraw federal funding from the University unless the military was given equal access. Penn yielded and permitted military recruiting. And thus, a lawsuit and protest were born.

The anti-recruiting focus of these measures is problematic for several reasons.

First, according to the 1995 Solomon Amendment, the government is within its rights to withhold funding if equal access is denied to the military. Federal funding is a double-edged sword -- by accepting it, Penn allows the government to regulate some of its policies. If a university wants complete independence from government interference, it must reject federal subsidies (and institutions such as Thomas Aquinas College in California do just that).

Second, the military is not the only recruiter with discriminatory policies. The CP&P; Web site includes information for employers such as the American Indian Law Alliance (www.ailanyc.org), a private organization that stresses having leaders of a racially Native American background. Another listed recruiter is the Massachusetts Family Institute (www.mafamily.org), a fundamentalist Christian group that advertises a "Pray for Marriage" event. I suspect an openly gay, atheist law student would be no more welcome at the MFI than in the Armed Forces. Thus, CP&P; seems to be singling out the military, while ignoring other employers with equally problematic policies.

However, a more troubling aspect of the anti-recruitment campaign is that it disenfranchises low-income students. The military is a major source of opportunity for low-income individuals who want to attend college. For example, the Judge Advocate General's Corps, open to law graduates, grants up to $60,000 that can be used to repay loans. For people in impoverished communities with few opportunities, the U.S. Army is an escape route to a better life. Although it's wrong that the military's policy excludes openly gay soldiers, it's also wrong to deny low-income students the chance to succeed by preventing them from learning about opportunities.

I asked Jacob Press, the co-chairman of Lambda Law, about this issue. He responded that under the status quo, low-income, openly gay individuals were denied the opportunities I just mentioned. I agree this is a travesty. However, banning recruiting and preventing other students from accessing opportunities does not correct the injustice done to the gay and lesbian community.

Worst of all, outlawing army recruiting at Penn is unlikely to change the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Lambda Law Co-Chairwoman Maura McKenna said that advocating change using the current methods felt like "throwing a pebble in the wind." Moreover, Press noted that "at root, it's a statute put in place by Congress." He said that an effective technique for overturning the policy would be to lobby elected representatives and persuade the electorate. To that end, McKenna said that Lambda Law has a letter-writing campaign planned for this spring.

Lambda Law and the Penn Law litigants should stop their effort to ban recruiting. Instead, they should focus on lobbying legislators, educating the public and encouraging research into the successful inclusion of gays and lesbians in the military. Hopefully, these techniques will successfully overturn the unjust "don't ask, don't tell" policy, while preventing new prejudices from "festering unchallenged."

Jennifer Weiss is a senior Linguistics and Theatre Arts major from Los Angeles. War On Error appears on Wednesdays.

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