Boston army recruitment center sees numbers rise, but remains controversial for some

7/2/09Boston Metro Station Commander Sgt. Gregory Grayson is an amiable-looking Texan who complains a lot about the New England weather, which on this particular day is drizzly and in the sixties. "Not July weather," he says. Surrounded by pictures of his wife and four kids, Grayson has been sitting at his desk in the back of the eight-man office on Tremont Street, the largest military recruiting center in Boston, since 4:30 a.m.

"It's all what we call prospecting," Grayson says, about the recruiting process. "Like we're mining for gold."

Over the last year he and his fellow "non-commissioned officers" have recruited plenty of students from the area: Boston University (27), Northeastern (23), Berklee (13), University of Massachusetts-Boston (11), Suffolk (eight), Wentworth and Harvard (five each), Emerson and Boston College (three each), and MIT and Tufts (one each).

Due to the recession, Grayson said, "We've seen an increase in college graduates interested in being officers or interested in paying back student loans. Normally where I'd see three to four candidates for officer school a year, I'm getting more like three to four a month that are interested."

The Associated Press reported June 16 that applications for military academies have surged as the economy plummets, with U.S. Naval Academy applications up 40 percent since last year. Annapolis received 15,300 applications, the most in more than 20 years.

"In a climate in which there are fewer job options, there's the poverty draft," Mass Peace Action coordinator Angela Kelly said. "Particularly in communities where there are less options."

A lot of Kelly's activism has centered around educating high schoolers about the ways in which they're being recruited, especially without their knowledge.

A provision in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires local education authorities to hand over students' names, addresses and telephone listings to military recruiters, if requested.

"Most [students] are never informed that they can opt out of this," Kelly said. "But even when students do opt out, there are many ways that military are collecting data to aggressively target them. Military recruiters have been setting up at malls, setting up rock climbing walls. All these fun flashy activities that when they participate have to provide their information to these recruiters."

Grayson, however, frames these extracurricular activities, like working with Big Brothers, Big Sisters or attending fairs, as a renewed effort by the army to get more involved with the community--to act as mentors and counselors for high school students.

"There's more to the army than jumping out of airplanes and crawling through the mud and deploying to Iraq," he said. "That's part of it; depending on your job you're gonna go crawl through the mud and you're gonna live in a tent, but there are other sides to it. I have yet to meet anyone that's not from a military family who was aware of how strongly the army encourages continuance of education."

Another aspect of army recruitment is image. The GoArmy.com Web site opens up a bit like a movie preview, with a banner reading, "A World Like No Other." Add a little graphic wizardry, and the viewer gets to fly through the sandy hills at top speed, then invited to "explore" by clicking on various icons, like "Apache Helicopter" or "Cryptological Linguist," which then show more promotional videos.

"They try to make the military seem fun," said Nate Goldschlag, a member of Veterans for Peace, which has participated in protests outside the recruitment center. "They're trying to portray the military as just another extended video game."

When Michael Bay's Transformers came thundering into theaters two years ago, July 4, it garnered attention for more than just the robots. More than 300 real-life soldiers operating real aircrafts were used for the man vs. evil machine combat scenes. In fact, it was the first time that any film crew had been allowed to film on Pentagon grounds since 9/11.

An article about the movie released by Air Force Print News Today, July 3, 2007, quoted one enthusiastic sergeant, "The movie was fantastic [.] I think it is a great recruiting tool."

The producer of the film, Ian Bryce, also quoted in the article, said,"we would never have been able to make this movie without the willingness of the (Defense Department) to embrace this project."

MPA's Kelly said she believes this kind of glorification and sparkly advertising for the armed forces, when the country is in the midst of two very real wars, is "destructive."

"To say this is just about leadership or service or learning discipline--while those may be experiences that some people have--it's deceptive to highlight the leadership experiences, while ignoring the trauma of war," Kelly said.

Goldschlag was drafted in 1970, and like Kelly, he doesn't necessarily want to end recruitment, but make it more "honest."

"As veterans, we want to tell people that they're told a lot of lies by recruiters," he said. "Some people have been told that if they don't like the military, they can get out if they want to."

The last counter-recruitment demonstration was last year.

Trained to steer missiles at low flying helicopters and airplanes, Grayson is a veteran of Desert Storm. He's been to Guantanamo, but that was before 2001 and it was to "process Haitian refugees."

He says the demonstrations don't bother him. "The fact that me and my NCOs in here, the soldiers that we enlist, understand that's what we do [protection], that knowledge makes it easy to appreciate the folks out there that are throwing blood on themselves and dress in military uniforms and such.