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March 29, 2005
Letter to the Editor: A now-banned military recruiter feels ostracized, shunned, and isolated
As a military recruiter, I would like to say a few things about Hamline University. I think it’s very sad that you people are unwilling to support military recruitment at your school just because of your antidiscrimination policy.
I mean, we’re in a war here. Couldn’t protesters at least have the courtesy to save their protesting until after the war is over?
Why should we care about our policy when we’re just busy trying to get more people over to Iraq? We have work to finish before we can think about things like our administrative protocols.
Who cares about some little policy when the military is continually diminishing because we have to kick out the people who are gay or lesbian? We simply don’t have the time to comply with some policy of yours; we need people and we need them now.
Fewer and fewer people are enrolling in the military these days, and we can’t afford to have universities banning us. Besides, “don’t ask, don’t tell” is a government policy, and any idiot knows that the government never makes any mistakes.
The whole point of having elected representatives is so that we don’t have to make those kinds of judgment calls for ourselves. That’s not our job; it’s the job of the people we vote for, and the people we voted for made a decision. And they’re sticking to it.
The things that have been said about the military are mean and hurtful. In fact, after reading all of the criticism of our “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, I’ve been tempted to just curl up in a ball and cry because I feel so isolated and alone.
No one knows how lonely it can be to be spoken out against, just because I’m a member of a certain group of people.
I feel completely ostracized now. I have to make secret contact with students and set up meetings with them in public parks, dark alleys, and gas stations. I know that people are talking about me when I walk past campus, hovering on the fringes in hopes of catching sight of a prospective soldiers.
“Look,” they’ll say, “he’s that military recruiter.” And they may not say what they are thinking, but I know that they think I’m an outsider who doesn’t belong in the community at all. I know that they start rumors about me and whether or not I’ve ever rejected an interview with someone based on their sexual orientation, and all I can say to that is that it’s totally unfair.
It’s not like I decided what the military policy should be. It’s not like it’s a way of life that I personally chose. It’s just the way things are, and if people can’t deal with that, it’s not my fault.
I just wish people would be more considerate. Just because my job forces me to have a certain lifestyle doesn’t mean that it’s what I would necessarily choose for myself. It’s not something that I have control over.
Last week, someone threw a watermelon at me and called me a perpetrator of hate crimes. Can anyone honestly say that they can relate to this kind of narrow-minded thinking?
I doubt it.
So give me a break. After all, I’m only human, and I’m only doing what I’ve been told.
Sgt. Jason Jackson Frye
Military Recruiter
Posted by msveum at March 29, 2005 01:23 PM
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