A bill passed last month that disallows some types of federal funding to colleges and universities that ban military recruiters from their campuses has raised legal, constitutional and ethical questions.
The bill, HR 4200, is an extension of the Solomon Amendment passed in 1996, which excludes colleges from receiving funds from the Department of Defense if they bar military recruiters from their campuses.
The new bill broadens the previous one to include funding from the Homeland Security and Transportation Departments, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration and the CIA.
Funding from these departments is usually given to universities conducting research on defense, transportation, or energy, according to Kelly Field, a reporter with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
HR 4200 also requires military recruiters' access to students to be "equal in quality and scope to the access to campuses and to students that is provided to any other employer."
"There are no pros to this legislation," said Kent Greenfield, a professor at the Boston College Law School. Greenfield is the founder of the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, a group of 25 law schools that filed one of the first lawsuits against the government over the Solomon Amendment.
Greenfield argues that both laws are a violation of institutions' First Amendment rights. "What I'm fighting for is the right of educational institutions to make their own decisions," he said.
Added controversy arises due to the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on homosexuality. "Some schools don't want to have military recruiters on campus because their stance is a violation of the school's nondiscrimination policy," Greenfield said.
"This is similar to what would happen when any recruiter comes onto campus and said 'we only want to hire white people, or we only want to hire women,'" Greenfield said. "The schools are saying, 'no we don't want to treat these recruiters equally if they discriminate against some of our students.'"
But President of Tufts Republicans Nicholas Boyd said the bill is not offensive to universities' rights and policies. "Colleges are free to make their own choice in this matter," he said. "Suggesting that colleges should receive federal funds and simultaneously have the right to avoid even the most minimal obligations to contributing to the
security interests of our country is ridiculous."
Some observers say HR 4200 was passed due to the military's current need for new recruits.
"As we know, the war and the military are both extremely strained," said Adam Koeppel, member of the Tufts Democrats. "I don't think this is ideologically driven, I think it's more need-driven."
But Boyd characterized the legislation as the product of some colleges' anti-military mindset. "I wouldn't be surprised if the military was being shut out of certain institutions with a paranoid fear of the military, perhaps sparked by the war in Iraq, and this is a way of responding to that," he said.
At Tufts, military recruiters are given full access to students.
"Typically they don't come on campus, although if they wanted to we would let them," Director of Career Services Jean Papalia said. "We usually see them at career fairs. Our job is to provide access to potential employers and then let students pick."
There has been no opposition to Tufts' policy so far, according to Papalia.
Political science professor Kent Portney said the place of military recruiters on campus should be more limited.
Portney said the CIA has been responsible for "bad things" in the past. "To have them on campus is a tacit approval of the things they've done," he said.
Still, Portney said students interested in working with the military should be given the opportunity to do so by their schools. "I don't think having military recruiters on campus is proselytizing in any way because the students who are interested already agree with the military," he said.
Greenfield agreed, saying that in the context of the restrictions imposed by the bill, "the place of military recruiters on campus should really be where the educational institution wants them to be."
For those still opposed to the bill, Greenfield said universities can sue the governments in their own name and students can protest when recruiters arrive on campus, as did students at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.
Most importantly, students' role is in "pressing their own institution for a plain statement that the institution's standards are clearly in favor of nondiscrimination," Greenfield said.
Koeppel said critics of the bill should "define the argument in a moral sense," which he says would give them "the grassroots support they need to pull it through."
Yet taking such a stance may be easier said than done in the current political climate.
"In an era of pro-military fervor and patriotism, it takes people with extraordinary courage to stand up for this unpopular view," Greenfield said. "What I'm really fighting is that this legislation makes it impossible for us to protest in the way we want to protest," he said.
