Published in The Star-Ledger on Jan 3, 2006

Your Dec. 11 story "Rutgers students march on Marine recruiting office" reports that recruiters offer free helicopter rides to Rutgers students to show that Marines fly. The recruiter said, "When we're up in the air, it's not as if we tie you up and make you sign something." Maybe not, but it is still coercive. Colleges and universities cannot restrict recruiters without losing federal funding, even in the face of the military's open discrimination against gays, the subject of FAIR vs. Rumsfeld, a case before the Supreme Court. It is inappropriate for recruiters to bring helicopters, Hummers, weaponry, rock walls and mobile cinema centers to campus. The university is obliged to provide military recruiters with "entry to any campus ... equal to that of other employers." It is not required that the university permit military hardware. Helicopters and Hummers have no place on campus. In this climate of war, spying on student groups, compiling ethnic information on possible recruits and spending billions to find ever more reluctant recruits, we should join with the students and get our state university's policy changed.