How the student loan debt crisis forces low-income students of color into the military.

Dec 14, 2020 / Anna Attie / In These Times - When James Gard­ner got injured play­ing bas­ket­ball as a DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty fresh­man, he lost his finan­cial aid pack­age and was dropped from his class­es. To stay in school, he took out a $10,000 loan.

Soon, Gard­ner (a pseu­do­nym request­ed in fear of reprisal) and his fam­i­ly real­ized they couldn’t afford the uni­ver­si­ty. Instead, he trans­ferred to a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty out­side Chica­go and enrolled in the Reserve Offi­cer Train­ing Corps (ROTC) of the Air Force. The mil­i­tary paid for his entire col­lege edu­ca­tion — on the con­di­tion he serve at least four years after graduation.

Gard­ner is a mem­ber of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca (DSA) and says the mil­i­tary is geared toward ​“resource extrac­tion and resource allo­ca­tion.” When DSA col­leagues learn about his mil­i­tary back­ground, he says there is a ​“lit­tle bit of a gasp.”

“Would I be in the same predica­ment,” he won­ders, ​“if col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty were tuition-free? Would I have gone through ROTC? I don’t know.”

Gardner’s sit­u­a­tion isn’t unique. Amer­i­cans owe more than $1.67 tril­lion (Source: adjusted for 11/2022 now $1.768 trillion) in stu­dent debt, and the cost of col­lege has increased by more than 25% in the past 10 years. Accord­ing to a 2017 poll by the Depart­ment of Defense, pay­ing for edu­ca­tion is the top rea­son young peo­ple con­sid­er enlist­ing. In 2019, the Army cred­it­ed the stu­dent debt cri­sis with help­ing it sur­pass its recruit­ment goals.

The Gamer’s Dilemma

Chad Vance / Professor / William & Mary College - The Dilemma: We’ll start with two assumptions: Murder is morally wrong. Also, pedophilia (i.e., sexually molesting a child) is morally wrong.

In the real world, the verdict is the same: Both acts are wrong. Now imagine a VIDEO GAME where the gamer’s objectives involve molesting children. Very likely, you are morally opposed to such a game, and believe they should not be made or sold. If so, then consider the following argument:

1.Committing virtual pedophilia (e.g., in a video game) is morally wrong.

2.However, there are no morally relevant differences between committing a virtual act of pedophilia and committing a virtual act of murder.**

3.Therefore,committing virtual murder in a video game is also morally wrong.

[* Note: By ‘virtual murder it is meant an act of killing that would clearly be morally wrong were it committed in the real world. For instance, in Grand Theft Auto, players control criminal characters who drive around hitting and killing pedestrians. Contrast this with, say, those versions of Call of Duty where players control U.S. soldiers whom (we may presume) are killing enemy soldiers in a just war. Assume also that the person killed in the game stays dead—i.e., they do not “re-spawn”.]

[* Why morally equivalent? Well, in the real world, both actions are seriously morally wrong. And, in the virtual world, no one is actually harmed. You’re just manipulating pixels on a screen. Initially, there don’t seem to be any obvious moral differences.]

The conclusion here is that playing games like Grand Theft Auto is morally wrong! And yet, it is one of the best-selling game franchises of all time, with Grand Theft Auto V alone having sold over 100 million copies! (source) It seems that quite a few people must believe that committing virtual murder is morally permissible.

Kate Connell / Fred Nadis / Antiwar.com / English - En 2016-17, el ejército de los EE. UU. Visitó Santa Maria High School y la cercana Pioneer Valley High School en California más de 80 veces. Los marines visitaron la escuela secundaria Ernest Righetti en Santa María más de 60 veces ese año. Un alumno de Santa María comentó: "Es como si ellos, los reclutadores, fueran parte del personal". Un padre de un estudiante de secundaria en Pioneer Valley comentó: "Considero que los reclutadores en el campus que hablan con niños de 14 años "preparan" a los jóvenes para que estén más abiertos al reclutamiento en su último año. Quiero que mi hija tenga más acceso a reclutadores de universidades y para que nuestras escuelas promuevan la paz y soluciones no violentas al conflicto".

Esta es una muestra de lo que experimentan las escuelas secundarias, particularmente en áreas rurales, a nivel nacional y la dificultad de enfrentar la presencia de reclutadores militares en el campus. Si bien nuestro grupo de contrarreclutamiento sin fines de lucro, Truth in Recruitment , con sede en Santa Bárbara, California, considera que ese acceso militar es más que excesivo, en lo que respecta al ejército, ahora que la pandemia ha cerrado los campus, esos eran los buenos viejos tiempos. El Comandante del Servicio de Reclutamiento de la Fuerza Aérea, el General de División Edward Thomas Jr., comentó a un periodista de Military.com , que la pandemia de Covid-19 y los cierres de escuelas secundarias en todo el país han hecho que el reclutamiento sea más difícil que antes.

Thomas afirmó que el reclutamiento en persona en las escuelas secundarias era la forma de mayor rendimiento para reclutar adolescentes. “Los estudios que hemos realizado muestran que, con el reclutamiento cara a cara, cuando alguien es realmente capaz de hablar con un [suboficial] de la Fuerza Aérea viva, que respira y con agudeza, podemos convertir lo que llamamos clientes potenciales en reclutas en una proporción de aproximadamente 8:1, dijo. "Cuando hacemos esto de forma virtual y digital, se trata de una proporción de 30:1". Con estaciones de reclutamiento cerradas, sin eventos deportivos para patrocinar o en los que presentarse, sin pasillos para caminar, sin entrenadores y maestros que preparar, sin escuelas secundarias a las que presentarse con remolques cargados de videojuegos militarizados, los reclutadores se han desplazado a las redes sociales para encontrar posibles estudiantes.

Kate Connell / Fred Nadis / Antiwar.com / español - In 2016-17, the U.S. Army visited Santa Maria High School and nearby Pioneer Valley High School in California over 80 times. The Marines visited Ernest Righetti High School in Santa Maria over 60 times that year. One Santa Maria alumnus commented, “It’s as if they, the recruiters, are on staff.” A parent of a high school student at Pioneer Valley commented, "I consider recruiters on campus talking to 14 year olds as "grooming" young people to be more open to recruitment in their senior year. I want my daughter to have more access to college recruiters and for our schools to promote peace and nonviolent solutions to conflict."

This is a sample of what high schools, particularly in rural areas, experience nationwide, and the difficulty of confronting the presence of military recruiters on campus. While our nonprofit counter-recruitment group, Truth in Recruitment, based in Santa Barbara, California, views such military access as beyond excessive, as far as the military is concerned, now that the pandemic has closed campuses, those were the good old days. The Air Force’s Recruiting Service Commander, Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas Jr., commented to a journalist at Military.com, that the Covid-19 pandemic and high school shutdowns nationwide have made recruiting more difficult than previously.

Thomas stated that in-person recruiting at high schools was the highest yield way to recruit teenagers. “Studies that we’ve done show that, with face-to-face recruiting, when somebody is actually able to talk to a living, breathing, sharp Air Force [noncommissioned officer] out there, we can convert what we call leads to recruits at about an 8:1 ratio,” he said. “When we do this virtually and digitally, it’s about a 30:1 ratio.” With closed recruiting stations, no sporting events to sponsor or appear at, no hallways to walk, no coaches and teachers to groom, no high schools to show up at with trailers loaded with militarized video games, recruiters have shifted to social media to find likely students.