This is what passes for academia.
A Seattle woman, who fought allowing military recruiters in local high schools, is the lead author of a report that compares the behaviors of recruiters with the behaviors of sexual predators.
Amy Hagopian, assistant professor with the University of Washington’s Department of Global Health concludes military recruiters are a “threat to the health of adolescents.”
……The UW published this report about Hagopian’s research, done with Kathy Barker, PhD. It is presented as a commentary in the January 2011 edition of the American Journal of Public Health, under the title “Should We End Military Recruiting in High Schools as a Matter of Child Protection and Public Health?”
Ending military recruiting in schools is something Hagopian and Barker have been trying to do for a long time. In 2005, Garfield High School became the first in the United States to ban military recruiters from their campus. Hagopian was Garfield’s PTSA president at the time and led that effort. Now Hagopian and Barker believe recruiters exhibit behaviors similar to predatory grooming when they enter high schools.
“Grooming behavior is defined as the process by which a child is befriended by a would-be abuser in an attempt to gain the child’s confidence and trust,” Hagopian says.
The Army calls the professor’s claim that military recruiters act like child predators “outrageous and offensive.”
“To say that a military recruiter has the same way of approaching young people that a twisted sexual predator does, is highly offensive and blatantly wrong,” says Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Smith says there are about 9,000 Army recruiters working across the country and if anything they serve as role models and mentors to students.
“We show America’s youth what the core values of the Army are – physical fitness, moral fitness, the kinds of behaviors that we expect of our soldiers,” Smith says. “To say these men and women are somehow equivalent to a sex predator is just wrong headed.”
In the meantime, the disgusting litle scrunt is mum on the “fisting” lessons given to school kids by Obama’s Safe Schools Czar, Kevin Jennings.
By the way, non-prior service CIVILIANS are more likely to engage in criminal behavior, and have more mental and emotional disorders than military personnel and veterans. Veterans who go back to school outperform their civilian counterparts.
The Army taught me Duty, Honor, Country. I became a better person and citizen during my 30 years of service. I experienced, first hand, the contrast between sitting back and enjoying freedom and doing what it takes to protect it. I had the privilege of knowing some of the finest people ever to wear the uniform, and I will never forget them. Becoming a Soldier is something a pogue like Amy could never achieve, let alone appreciate. It embodies the principles, values, and dedication of people far better than she. It really takes a special sort of ingrate to disparage people who go into harms way to protect democracy.
While the visceral, leftwing miscreants like Hagopian work their whole lives to bring this country to its knees, Soldiers preserve, protect, and defend the United States. They are part of the world’s noblest profession; something larger than themselves. What Soldiers do for our country and on the foreign fields of battle, help make the world a better place.
Contact Amy. She’d love to get feedback, I’m sure:
Health Alliance International 4534 11 Ave. NE Seattle, WA 98105 (voice) 206-543-8382 (fax) 206-685-4184
hagopian@u.washington.edu