US Student Resistance to Recruitment Grows

Although its massive recruitment budget gives the military the upper hand, students at high school and college campuses across the country are fighting back. Some are using legal means—they simply vote the military off their campus.

But students are not just passing resolutions; they are organizing walkouts, protests, information booths, pickets and petitions against military recruitment at their schools.

In February, around 500 students at Seattle Central Community College, led by a student anti-war group, surrounded an Army recruiter and chased him off campus. Angry students chanted loudly and some threw newspapers and soda cans at the recruiter.

Similar protests have occurred at University of Illinois-Chicago, University of the District of Colombia, Holyoke Community College in Massachusetts, East Los Angeles Community College, City College of New York, Southern Connecticut State University, William Patterson University, Santa Monica College and countless other campuses.

Hundreds of San Francisco State University students recently staged a sit-in against the United States Air Force and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On April 5, over 300 University of California Santa Cruz students marched through campus and kicked Army, Navy and Marine Corps recruiters out of the school’s annual job fair.