Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2002/01/21/law_profs_muzzle_rotc.php
Monday, January 21, 2002
'A terrorist takes hostages—that's what Congress did here.' This accusation of terrorism by our government comes from Sonoma State University professor Rick Luttman in reference to America's attempts to recruit for the military.
While many university professors have been busy working against our country's best interests, the most vocal, perhaps, have been members of the Society of American Law Teachers and the American Association of Law Schools.
Both SALT and AALS have been trying to make it as difficult as possible for the military to recruit law students, an effort that has gone on for over ten years. The organizations barred the military from recruiting on most law school campuses in 1990 when the organizations first added homosexuals to their list of potential victims of discrimination. Congress responded in 1995 and 1998 by refusing several forms of funding to any schools denying access to military recruiters or ROTC. These laws, the Solomon Amendments, forced the AALS to 'excuse' the military. Law schools can, however, 'ameliorate the discriminatory effects of the military's presence,' through a number of approved activities. Among the acceptable ameliorative activities are posting prominent notices 'explaining the government's coercion,' and hosting anti-military 'teach-ins' on the same day as the recruiting.
The AALS calls on schools who can afford to go without the federal funds to do so and to keep the military from recruiting on campus. For schools dependent on federal funding, the AALS allows 'excusable noncompliance with amelioration,' but still prohibits schools from providing computerized resume searches, student sign-ups, and coffees and lunches for the military recruiters on the grounds that all these create 'entanglement or complicity' with the military.
Following extensive lobbying and the support of Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank, prospects for a repeal of the Solomon amendments looked quite good in late 1999 and early 2000. The AALS went so far as to presumptively bar recruiting once again. The Department of Defense, however, quickly adopted new regulations to threaten federal funding to law schools refusing military recruiters, and to their parent universities. Adopted by Congress, these regulations, also apply to funds from the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and, in some circumstances, Transportation.
All of this occurs at a time when our military is severely understaffed. Army officials have publicly admitted to 'a creeping hollowness' in the armed forces, and reports indicate that several battalions have had to eliminate infantry squads in order to keep others fully manned. The Navy has had to send ships to sea undermanned by as much as 25%, and the Army's recruiting is at 20-year lows.
None of this, however, is really news. Law schools, Congress, and the military have been working on college recruitment since 1990, and President Bush has acted to improve morale and personnel retention several times. The real news is that SALT's slandering of these recruiting practices quickly followed President Bush's appeal for all Americans to help in some way. Discouraging the military from recruiting law students is unfortunate and misguided; spewing this rhetoric to the media in the middle of a national crisis is unconscionable.
Still, perhaps the most disturbing factor in the SALT/AALS decisions is that they push law professors away from their job: teaching. Law professors are hired to teach law; this is a service they render to their students in exchange for the students's tuition fees. Social engineering is not in their job descriptions. If students wish to serve their country and join the armed forces, they should be welcome, and even encouraged, to do so. Allowing the military (or any other organization) onto a campus to recruit does not make a school 'complicit' with any policies of the organization, but acknowledges that students may be interested in working for the organization. Allowing Planned Parenthood or the National Coalition for Life to recruit on a campus, does not, for example, imply that a university is taking a stance on abortion; the group just wants to hire graduates. When professors and schools dictate for whom their students can work after graduation, they abuse their power as teachers, mentors and guides.