UCSC students fight military recruitment at campus job fairs

<www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2003/April/01/local/stories/03local.htm>

April 1, 2003
By JONDI GUMZ
Sentinel STAFF WRITER

Some students at UC Santa Cruz want to keep military recruiters out of on-campus job fairs.
If they can’t persuade administrators to pull the invitation, they plan to make their case at a job fair April 8 at Stevenson College.
“We want hundreds of people protesting,” said Ryan Weber, 23, of Northridge, a graduate student in computer science.
The Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy are among the 60 employers scheduled to participate in the job fair, sponsored by the UCSC Career Center.
The need for military recruits is up since the United States attacked Iraq two weeks ago in an effort to dislodge Saddam Hussein, the county’s longtime leader, and free the Iraqi people.
But the peace movement at UC Santa Cruz is strong, and at least two campus organizations object to the idea of giving military recruiters access to students. About 14,000 students are enrolled this year.
One student group, Fiat Pax, argues that military recruiters don’t belong on a campus where faculty passed a resolution opposing an attack on Iraq. The group’s name, translated from Latin, means “Let there be peace” and plays on the UCSC motto of “Let there be light.”
The group’s petition argues that students should be encouraged to work to better society through jobs in an industry that does not instigate war.
Darwin Bond Graham, a senior and one of the organizers, collected more than 300 signatures as of last week while the campus was on break.
Weber argues that the military’s unwillingness to hire homosexuals is a violation of the university policy of nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation.
The UC Regents adopted a nondiscrimination policy in 1983. A year later, then-president David Gardner said permitting military recruiters on campus was not at odds with the policy.
That’s because the policy applies to campus groups operating under the Regents, not use of facilities by off-campus groups, he explained in a memo to chancellors.
Weber claims UCSC administrators are sympathetic but don’t want to jeopardize losing federal funds under the 1996 Solomon amendment, which tied federal funding to military recruiter access.
“It forces them to choose between students who need federal funding and students who need protection from discrimination,” he said. “That’s an atrocity.”
At first many law schools tried to limit access by military recruiters because of the discrimination against gays and lesbians. Some have relented after being threatened with the loss of federal money. Last year, Harvard Law School, which gets more than $300 million in federal funds, agreed to let military recruiters use the school’s placement office.
Weber has been invited to speak on the issue at a UC gathering of gay and lesbian program coordinators. But he doesn’t expect UCSC administrators will close the door to military recruiters because of the federal money at stake. Last year, UCSC got almost $51 million in federal funds, about 11 percent of its total budget.
“No way they can ignore the money,” Weber said.
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The job fair will be from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. April 8 at Stevenson College Dining Hall.
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Contact Jondi Gumz at jgumz (at) santa-cruz.com