Military Recruitment

Military madness

Teenage fantasy morphs into harsh reality

Emerson Elledge elledeme000@hsestudents.org Madelyn Lerew lerewmad000@hsestudents.org

While talking with your friends about your last math test and about how you really do not want to go to work tonight, you step into the cafeteria and see two uniformed men, whose personas only encourage violence and toxicity, bark out orders to adolescent boys struggling to do a pull-up. ey tell you that this is how you can be strong, this is how you can prove them all wrong, assuming that you fall into their predetermined demographic of needing help. e military preys on young high schoolers in an e ort to popularize their community. e military was once the allAmerican poster child for Aryan ideals but has evolved into a taste of what America actually is, with a hint of all the diversity America has to o er. is image remains problematic as the military still holds the traditional values of the past. e army, for example, has a higher percentage of Black women when compared to the civilian workforce. is, however, does not mean that the military is a safe place for minorities. It was only 12 years ago, in 2010, that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy was repealed, and transgender individuals were not allowed to serve until 2016. In fact, during the Trump administration, transgender individuals were once again barred from military service and it was not until Jan. 2021, that they were allowed to serve again. In certain individuals’ eyes, the military takes on a fantastical dream-like persona. A light at the end of the tunnel that acts as the solution to all your troubles, but this is not the case. e academic journal ‘Psychiatry: Interpersonal & Biological Processes’ conducted a study nding that risk-taking and school misbehavior were signi cant indicators of military enlistment in high schoolers. Some may view this as a good thing, nding the logic that the military will x them and implement discipline in their lives, but that is not the only thing it could do. e military has the potential to exaggerate these traits in adolescents by providing an environment that encourages “brave acts of heroism” that will inevitably cause harm. Instead of drawing teens away from situations that cause impulsive thinking, it pushes them toward them. e sickly sweet lure of the military’s fruit may be too much for a young adult to handle and far too easy to give in to, but a er the rst bite, reality sinks in when the burden of knowledge actualizes. e military o ers a plethora of bene ts, all further enhancing this fantasy. e most tantalizing and well-known of these bene ts is the o er of free or reduced college costs, as well as essentially guaranteed lifetime employment. e post-9/11 GI Bill covers college in-state tuition, the cost of in-state tuition at an out-of-state institution or the maximum national average of tuition at a private school. is is an amazing bene t, as most high school students have no choice but to take out student loans in order to cover tuition. Staying in the military also has the perk of retaining stable employment for the entirety of your career as the military does not undergo the same nancial troubles that a business does. ese bene ts are what can make it so hard for students to not seriously consider the possibility of joining the military. Once you get out, you are never truly free. If deployed, the experience of ghting in an active war zone is something that might never leave you. According to the U.S. Department of Veteran A airs, 11-20 out of 100 people that fought in the Iraq War su er from PTSD. is means that if not you, then someone who you grew close to during your deployment together most likely will go on to su er from this. e military is not a safe haven for teens coming out of high school, and it should not be treated as such. e impacts of enlisting go much farther into your psyche than one could possibly imagine. Keeping military recruiters out of high school cafeterias is not something that we should start thinking about, it is something that should have happened a long time ago.