57% of Military Personnel Who Signed Up Have Received Nothing - Average Net Payout to Veterans: Less than $2200

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June-July 2005 / Sam Diener and intern Jamie Munro / Peacework / AFSC -  The advertisements blare: Join the military and receive $70,000 for college! This bonus program, known as the Montgomery GI Bill - Army/Navy College Fund, is in reality, according to an August 27, 2004 press release from the US Army Recruiting Command, only available to those who qualify with high test scores, sign up for what the military deems "critical" military specialties (critical usually means hardest to fill and least desirable), and enlist for at least six years of active military duty. Approximately 95% of those who enter the military are not eligible for this maximum amount.

In fact, 57% of the veterans who signed up for the Montgomery GI Bill (MGIB) have never seen a penny in college assistance, and the average net payout to veterans has been only $2151. Primarily, the low average net is the result of the many military personnel who the Department of Defense (DoD) declares ineligible, and of the challenges faced by veterans trying to access the promised money even if they are eligible.

To be eligible for the MGIB, members of the military have to stay in for at least three years of active duty (except for a select few who qualify for a two-year active duty stint), and need to receive an honorable discharge. All enlisted military personnel are required to have $100 deducted from their salary for the first 12 months they are in the military to help pay for the program, unless they sign special forms opting out. This "deposit" is non-refundable. If the member of the military is later ruled ineligible (see below), they lose the $1200. The only circumstance in which the $1200 is refunded is if the enlistee dies on active duty. In that event, their next of kin will receive a refund.

March 2005 • Vol 5, No. 3 / Carole Seligman / SocialistViewpoint - As the devastation of Iraq continues, the antiwar movement is sinking roots in localities all around the United States from demonstrations and vigils, teach-ins, ballot measures, and town meetings (such as the recent series of town meetings all over the state of Vermont that voted to end Vermont National Guard Troops from being sent to Iraq.) Now, added to this broad antiwar movement, there is a mushrooming campaign to deny the U.S. military—all branches—the ability to recruit on high school and college campuses through direct recruitment programs and the para-mlilitary organization, Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC).

This campaign is taking place at a crucial juncture: The U.S. Army and the Marines have announced that they have failed to meet their current recruitment goals and there is discussion in the mainstream media about the meaning of this development. Recruitment of Black soldiers is reported to be down 41% since 2000. This reflects a strong anti-war consciousness among African-Americans.

The movement to stop military recruitment in schools is taking many forms including direct action taken by students against military recruitment; demonstrations at recruitment events and military propaganda tables, counter-recruitment trainings and activities where students learn techniques for answering the lies of military recruiters and try instead to recruit students to the antiwar movement, or to college and careers instead of the military, recruiting students to consider becoming conscientious objectors, and more. A new group of college students called “College Not Combat” has formed in the S.F. Bay Area to fight military recruitment on college campuses.

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November 24, 2002 / Elaine Rivera / Washington Post - Christopher Schmitt is careful to protect his son from companies that want to give the teenager credit cards or sell him sneakers. So at this year’s parents night at his son’s Fairfax County high school, Schmitt was dismayed to see a new form in the usual stack of permission slips and reminders.

This one invited him to sign if he wanted his son’s name, address and telephone number withheld from the Pentagon. Otherwise, the information would be included in a directory of the school’s juniors and seniors that will be given upon request to military recruiters.

Schmitt signed the form — quickly.

“Most people probably missed [the form], and it’ll probably be too late,” Schmitt said. “There is a commodity with your consumer history. With the military, the commodity happens to be your children’s information. . . . Once there’s a point of entry, you don’t know where the information is going to go.”

High schools across the nation must provide the directory — what one school official called “a gold mine of a list” — under a sleeper provision in the new No Child Left Behind Act, which was enacted this year. Military officials pushed for it to counter a steady decline in the number of people who inquire about enlisting.

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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.

While enforcement of the recruiting ban has been a problem from the start, we expect that school officials will now be even more inclined to look the other way in the face of obvious policy violations.

Last spring, two school board members initiated intense public debate by announcing their intention to overturn the six-year-old recruiting ban. Activists, students, and parents on both sides of the issue lobbied board members, gave many hours of public testimony, and staged public protests.

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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."