Messaging from Friday and Petition

Here's our message from Friday--
"We're sitting in here today to raise our voices against lies in
recruitment, to raise our voices to protest military occupation of our
schools and military occupation of Iraq. We're specifically in this
recruiting station in order to save the lives of young men and women, some
of whom are not even out of high school, who might join the military here
because of lies. We are stopping recruiting here by physically impeding it. But even more we want people to see us here, and then question and confront recruiting wherever they are. Even if one young person does not get recruited today based on lies, this will be worth it.
We want other students to know that they don't have to be submissive to the status quo, in our schools or in Iraq. Just because you're a student doesn't mean you don't have an opinion and a voice. We want every student in Vermont to know that they can get actively involved in changing things instead of remaining passively dissatisfied. We have high school students from schools across VT, who have to deal with recruiters coming into their schools. We have members of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Military Families Speak Out, who can speak from experience about the lies the military tells recruitees. But today, regardless of organizations or titles we have 75 Americans, Vermonters, people, who just want recruiters of out of schools and our country out of Iraq."

hazah!

And here is the petition that we sent to our senators:

Dear Congressman Sanders,

We, the students of Mount Mansfield high school, request that you address the issue of military recruiters in Vermont high schools. We feel that military recruiters are purposely misrepresenting the seriousness of military service. With 42% of the Vermont National guard deployed it is irresponsible for them to continue to claim that it is a casual commitment of "One weekend a month, two weeks a year". Although this slogan was retired in 2004, it is clear that this attitude still lingers as students get free pencils and promises of money for college.
Furthermore, the recruiters neglect to mention the fine print that accompanies the guarantee of college funding. Some contracts stipulate that if you drop out or fail out of college you will be redeployed. The majority of students at our school do not know the whole truth about benefits because they are only given the partial and convincing information that the recruiters hand out on glossy pamphlets. Along with glossy pamphlets they hand out pens, shirt and video games to advertise to students. The military is a serious commitment and should not be using gimmicks to recruit our students. It is both deceptive and inappropriate.
It is because of these reasons that we ask you and your fellow congressman to reform the No Child Left Behind legislation. We want you to deny recruiters access to student’s information without permission. Some schools are more vocal about the “opt-out”, but many students do not realize that they have this option. We feel that students shouldn’t have to “opt-out” of having their privacy invaded. We also feel that schools that deny military recruiters should not have any funding pulled. The decision whether or not to allow recruiters in a school should be that of principals, teacher, parents and students…not of the federal government.
Although we cannot vote we are drastically affected by this legislation. Our former classmates are fighting in Iraq, and more are being recruited. We respect and are grateful for those who serve in the armed forces, but we can no longer be passively silent about the flawed policies in No Child Left Behind. We implore you, a representative of the citizens of Vermont, to represent our collective discontent with this situation and do all that is in your power to change this legislation.