Los Angeles High School senior Victor Banuelos has received two phone calls from military recruiters in the last six months.
"They tell us, if we're failing classes, we're not going to make it to college," said Banuelos, 17, who wants to go to college. "They say, 'With our help is the only way to get out of the ghetto.' "
On Saturday, Banuelos and nearly 100 parents, teachers and students gathered at Manual Arts High School to discuss how to curb such military recruitment of public school students.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools are required to provide military recruiters with names, addresses and phone numbers of all high school juniors and seniors or lose millions of dollars of aid. However, parents can prevent the information from being provided if they complete an "opt out" form.
The daylong conference featured workshops on ROTC programs, which some antiwar activists say serve as a conduit to the armed services.
A different view was presented last week when 700 students from 48 schools competed in a Junior ROTC drill meet.
Junior ROTC leaders and cadets said the purpose of their programs was not to send young people off to war, and there was no requirement that students enrolled in such middle and high school programs serve in the military.
Rodney McElrath, who leads a JROTC program at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, said the program also encourages students to attend college.
"There's a lot of people who don't understand the purpose of ROTC," he said. "The biggest misunderstanding is that we're trying to get kids in the Army. That's not true, we want them to take their ... SATs."
But those who attended Saturday's conference at Manual Arts, which was sponsored by the United Teachers-Los Angeles Human Rights Committee and the Coalition Against Militarism in our Schools, disagreed.
Student speakers from Los Angeles Unified School District high schools spoke out against ROTC programs and pressure to join the military. In addition, Fernando Suarez del Solar, father of Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Alberto Suarez del Solar, who was killed in the Iraq war in March, urged the audience to resist military recruitment programs on campuses.
"This is a conscious plan on the part of the government to drive our students out of the schools and drive them into the military to take part in the death and destruction," Suarez del Solar said.
