español -
May 25, 1991 / Colman McCarthy / The Washington Post - ERIE, PA. -- Of officials running the Erie School District, Laurie Quiggle had the most modest of requests in 1986. In the name of both free speech and broadening the education options of students, including her own five children, might she provide information to the town's four public high schools to counter the military's freewheeling access to the young? Why not literature on conscientious objection to draft registration and on nonmilitary career opportunities?
She received an emphatic no.
The denial in no way deterred Quiggle, a member of the Erie Peace Alliance who takes adult-ed courses at nearby Edinboro University. Among the runarounds school board officials subjected her to, Quiggle remembers an early one designed for her specifically: "They came up with a legalism stating that the only outsiders allowed into the high schools were 'bona fide employers or bona fide representatives of educational institutions who actually have jobs to offer or further educational opportunities to offer.' In other words, the military was welcomed but not me."
Instead of slinking off, Quiggle found a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union. She took the school board to court. In late April, the chief judge in Erie's U.S. District Court ruled in her favor. After years of waiting, she is now allowed to bring her information on peace education and conscientious objection to guidance counselors. She can also post it on school bulletin boards. Quiggle now enjoys what military recruiters have had all along: access to Erie's public high schools. Her victory assures diversity.
When the decision came down late last month, Quiggle had a few days of elation that were followed by realizing, with some wavering, the enormous challenge of gathering the most credible anti-war literature available; scheduling visits with guidance counselors, teachers, parents and students; and doing it all with no funds of her own and no assistants. Quiggle, who is 38 and has children ranging from 6 to 15, vows to find a way.
The Erie court decision is the latest in a series of rulings against closed-minded school boards that resist even minor efforts of peace groups seeking educational choice. In 1989, a U.S. appeals court in Georgia ruled in favor of the Atlanta Peace Alliance's request to go into high schools on career days to offer views that differ from the military's: "It is almost axiomatic that a valid decision is one made after weighing pros and cons. Students certainly cannot be expected to make important career choices based only on positive information."
September 2001 / John Grueschow / Youth & Militarism Magazine - Since August 1995, Portland (OR) Public Schools District has maintained a controversial policy prohibiting military recruitment on school district property. Portland’s ban on military recruiting is based on the Armed Forces’ discrimination against lesbians and gays, as exemplified particularly in the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue" policy.
