Air Force recruitment Web site tells kids: College isn't possible!

[Berry Cool]

This may have been covered before, but I haven't seen it addressed in a while here, so I hope you will bear with me.

It's also long, so I hope you'll bear with me on that part too.

A while ago I read about an Air Force recruitment Web site, which can be found at http://www.whatamigonnadonext.com.

It's designed to look like the random doodles and scribblings of a high school student contemplating career options after graduation. It uses Flash Player to animate the different options supposedly available to the student and show how they are likely to turn out.

The options consist of the following: "Food Distribution," "VP of Mountain Operations," "Fix Stuff," "Help People," "Adrenaline Junky?", "Take Charge," "Fame and Fortune, Here I Come," "Family Business," "Electronics," "Can You Keep a Secret?", "More School?" and "Whatever" (a random option generator).

When you click on an option, you see how that option will presumably, inevitably, turn out for the student. In many cases, the outcome is not good. For example, "Food Distribution" shows the student that selecting a career in this area will result in having to wear a stupid outfit and facing all kinds of dreaded obstacles (including dog attacks) as they deliver food. "VP of Mountain Operations" offers more elaborate options, but all of them turn out with results ranging from boredom to terrible bone-breaking accidents in which you end up living with your parents. "Fame and Fortune" offers the options of rock star, movie star and reality show star, none of which turns out well (even if you succeed, a corporation sucks up all your money, but chances are you won't) and you end up living with your parents. In the "Family Business," you end up being bossed around by your father--and living with your parents.

In fact, all of the "Food Distribution," "VP of Mountain Operations," "Fame and Fortune, Here I Come," and "Family Business" scenarios ultimately end with a big red stamp that says "LIVE WITH PARENTS"--a fate the site creators obviously think their audience regards as worse than death (literally).

For other options, however--such as "Fix Stuff," "Help People," "Adrenaline Junky?", "Take Charge," "Electronics" and "Can You Keep a Secret?"--the site lists all kinds of wonderful career options available if you join the Air Force. If you join the Air Force, apparently, you won't end up living with your parents.

But the truly interesting (and, to my mind, insidious) option is "More School"? Know what happens if a kid clicks "More School?" This is what he finds out are the options if he or she chooses to try college. The options are "Party School," "Private University" and "Can't Afford It."

"Can't Afford It" leads right back to the other options. "Party School"--yes, ALL public universities, according to this Web site, are "party schools"--leads to partying, all right, but it also leads to not studying for a test, getting an F and upsetting Mom and Dad--which leads right back to "LIVE WITH PARENTS."

"Private University" leads to a muttering portrait titled "Sir Richard Moneybags VII." A question is asked: "Does your dad look like this guy?" Click "yes" and you get no comment but "Yeah, right." Click "no" and you get this statement: "APPLICATION DENIED." In the final scene, the poor slacker student is shown holding out a tin cup to Mom and Dad, with Dad yelling "YOU need money? I need money! I'm gonna start charging you rent!" Again, down comes the final stamp of ignominy: "LIVE WITH PARENTS."

In other words, what is this Air Force recruitment Web site doing? It's telling high-school students--in a time of war, when the decision they make about what to do with their lives could be a matter of life or death--that not only are they unlikely to become happy, self-sufficient human beings through the vehicles of fast food sales, ski bumming it or expecting to become rich and famous overnight (which I think most people would agree with), but also that the family business holds no future for them either (something I'm sure many a person would beg to differ with) and that college is NOT an option unless their parents are wealthy.

The way I see it, far worse than implying that fast food, music, acting or family businesses are dead-end job options (which they aren't--at least not always) is the damage done by telling kids flat-out that THEY CAN'T GO TO COLLEGE UNLESS THEIR PARENTS CAN AFFORD TO SEND THEM. I mean, it's bad enough that all public universities are characterized as "party schools" from which flunking out is a certainty. On top of that, private schools are characterized as unaffordable for all but the rich. No mention here of scholarships or financial aid. Uh-uh. Oh, I'm sure they mention that stuff as a lure to get you into the Air Force, but by just looking at this you'd think the civilian world never heard of such things. Nope, the kids are told: If your parents don't have the money to pay for college, YOUR APPLICATION WILL BE DENIED! So you MIGHT AS WELL NOT EVEN APPLY!

I worry a bit about kids who may see and hear this kind of message, and never be exposed to a college viewbook or catalog, most of which make it abundantly clear that students are NOT admitted based solely on their ability to pay tuition.

Advertising like this makes it all too obvious that the goal of hard-pressed military recruiters today is to push kids toward the military by convincing them it is not one of several realistic options they have for finding a satisfying career, but indeed the ONLY one. Because all other possible career paths lead to the terrible fate of becoming a slacker and a failure, living with your parents.

Nowhere is the message that if you join the Air Force, and end up being sent to Iraq, you may get maimed and have to come home without an arm or a leg...and end up living with your parents. And certainly nowhere is the possibility mentioned that you might end up coming home to your parents, all right--but that it might not be to "live" with them, but rather to be buried by them.

[MADem]

1. wear a stupid outfit and facing all kinds of dreaded obstacles (including

dog attacks) as they deliver food.

That is friken HYSTERICAL!!!

Why, it's WAY better to wear a stinky set of cammies that you don't have time to wash, with a week's worth of fetid sweat on them, topped off with 40 pounds of gear, a helmet that often doesn't fit right, in 110 degree heat, with no beer, no first run films, dodgy water, lousy food, and continued redeployments...give me a surly dog over mortars and IEDs any day!

[Berry Cool]

5. You got it. And don't forget the hillbilly armor.

Yeah, kids can sure go for some of that. After all, it beats having to wear one of those silly pizza hats!

[IndyOp]

2. Want to help people?

Consider Pararescue.

Like hugs? Penetrate hostile areas to bring back any of our downed airmen and you'll receive more embraces than you'll know what to do with. Receives a lot of gifts around the holidays.

:puke:

Psychology majors are defined by their desire to 'help people' -- this should suck them into the war machine in droves.

Every soldier is a cog in a machine designed to kill.

[Berry Cool]

6. Didn't you love it?

Yep, that's your big reward for going ino pararescue. Getting embraces. Assuming, of course, the people you rescue have any arms left to embrace you with. Oh, and holiday gifts! Did we mention the holiday gifts??

Just a note to add to the college stuff. Here's an excerpt from Harvard University Gazette from back in March:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/03/30-finaid.html

Harvard expands financial aid for low- and middle-income families

Reinforcing its commitment to opportunity and excellence across the economic spectrum, Harvard today (March 30) announced a significant expansion of its 2004 financial aid initiative for low- and middle-income families. Beginning with the class admitted this week, parents in families with incomes of less than $60,000 will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of their children attending Harvard. In addition, Harvard will reduce the contributions of families with incomes between $60,000 and $80,000.

Now that's Harvard, people. HARVARD. They're saying "If you can get in--and that's hard enough--and your family makes less than $60K, you don't have to pay up front. Period." Why? Because they're not getting as many apps from lower-income students, and they need to do something about it. Are the wealthier kids subsidizing the less wealthy? Sure. But that's how it goes. Schools NEED kids who are bright but not wealthy. They actively recruit such kids. Not only Harvard, either, but many schools.

Yet the military recruiters want kids to believe--no matter how bright they are or how well they might do in college--that their options are either "go to a party school, party too much and flunk out" or "go to a private school, but only if your father's loaded. Otherwise, forget it." Leading them, of course, straight into the arms of the only source of financial independence from their parents that they are supposed to believe exists: the military.

[pdxmom]

3. Recruitment tactics for the military are out of control.

Shocking story here in the local paper, The Oregonian, about what the military has been up to. This involves recruitment of an 18 year-old autistic boy, and it is appalling:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1146882329307730.xml&coll=7

"Tracking by the Pentagon shows that complaints about recruiting improprieties are on pace to approach record highs set in 2003 and 2004. The active Army and the Reserve missed recruiting targets last year, and reports of recruiting abuses continue from across the country."

So the Pentagon is aware of recruiting abuses, but the number continues to rise.

"A family in Ohio reported that its mentally ill son was signed up, despite rules banning such enlistments and the fact that records about his illness were readily available.

In Houston, a recruiter warned a potential enlistee that if he backed out of a meeting he would be arrested.

And in Colorado, a high school student working undercover told recruiters he had dropped out and had a drug problem. The recruiter told the boy to fake a diploma and buy a product to help him beat a drug test."

This is obviously a systemic problem that the Pentagon has no intention of correcting. They are just hoping that the number of abuses that they get away with outnumber the abuses that get caught.

[Berry Cool]

7. What a horrible story.

It reminds me of a job I had once, calling up subscribers to a newspaper after they had been signed up to ensure that their deliveries were taking place and they were not having any problems. Boy, did I get an earful!

The people who, like me, were calling the subscribers after the fact were not the same people as the telemarketer who had originally sold them the subscriptions. Apparently he was a really smooth con man. People told me all kinds of stories.

"Please cancel our subscription. I told the man no, but he signed me up anyway."
"Please cancel this subscription. When your salesman called, my 78-year-old mother with Alzheimer's answered and he signed her up."
"Please cancel this subscription. When your salesman called, my 5-year-old picked up the phone and he sold her a subscription."

Etc., etc., etc. Some of them may have been backing out, but I have no doubt many told the truth.

Of course, that was just a newspaper subscription. These poor kids are being made to sign on the dotted line to a commitment where they may end up dead...even if they're not mentally competent to do so.

Talk about no conscience.

[jwirr]

4. This is why *ss and Co. keep on cutting college funds. The more

young men/women who cannot afford college the more cannon fodder there is to waste. The only answer to this is to boycott enlistment.