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03/07/2006:

"More blacks deciding not to serve"

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- War. College. A better job. The answers are as numerous as the number of young black people who are deciding against a military career.

Defense Department statistics show that the number of black active-duty enlisted personnel has declined 14 percent since 2000.

The decrease is particularly acute among the troops most active in the Middle East: The number of black enlisted soldiers has dropped by 19 percent and the number of black enlisted Marines has fallen by 26 percent in the same period.

Even in this area near Fort Bragg, where serving in uniform is a family tradition, the drop in Army enlistment by blacks from 2000 to 2005 matches the national average.

Kashonda Leycock is the daughter of a soldier, and the 17-year-old has been a member of the Junior ROTC at Westover High School for more than two years.

She joined to prove to her parents and herself she could do it -- not because she wants to join the military. She doesn't. Her primary objection is the war in Iraq.

"Why are we fighting?" Leycock asked. "Nobody has really said why the war is still going on. I don't think it should be going on because it's not solving anything. ... None of my people want to go there."

The lack of support for the war by blacks -- in uniform or not -- is striking. A poll of Cumberland County residents, commissioned last year by The Fayetteville Observer, showed that 69 percent of whites said the war in Iraq was worth the costs. Only 19 percent of blacks agreed.
news14charlotte.com


Supreme Court Upholds Law on College Military Recruiting
WASHINGTON, March 6 — The Supreme Court upheld a law today that cuts federal funding from universities that do not give military recruiters the same access to students that other potential employers receive.

The court ruled that the law does not violate the free-speech rights of universities that object to the military's exclusion of gay men and lesbians who are open about their sexual orientation.

The opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was unanimous.

It was a setback, although hardly an unexpected one, to a coalition of law schools that brought the constitutional challenge, as well as to the Association of American Law Schools, which represents nearly all accredited law schools and since 1991 has required adherence to a nondiscrimination policy on sexual orientation as a condition of membership.

Many law schools initially chose to comply with by barring military recruiters completely or by taking such steps as refusing to help the recruiters schedule appointments or relegating them to less favorable locations for meeting with students.

Congress responded with a series of increasingly punitive measures, all known as the Solomon Amendment, culminating in the 2004 statute at issue in the case. It requires access for military recruiters "that is at least equal in quality and scope" to access for other employers, on pain of forfeiting grants to the entire university from eight federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services.

With hundreds of millions of dollars potentially at stake, all but a handful of law schools yielded. Nearly three dozen banded together as the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, with the acronym FAIR, and turned to the courts.

Carl C. Monk, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, said in an interview today that the association would continue to require its member schools to engage in "significant" activities to counter the impact of the Solomon Amendment, including organizing faculty forums.