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THE SELLING OF THE ARMY
JANUARY 16, 1995
TRANSCRIPT
Dangerous missions like Bosnia pose a challenge to "marketing" the modern army. Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Television reports.
LEE HOCHBERG: Before sunrise in the parking lot of a Seattle high school, soldiers hustle to transform a U.S. Army 18-wheeler into a theater on wheels. It's one of the army's seven cinema vans. The vans crisscross the country, visiting thousands of schools and more than three hundred thirty thousand students per year. The students filed in on this day, a soldier queued up a multimedia presentation, and a recruiter began his pitch to join the army.
SGT. PICKNEY, Recruiter: Good morning! (yelling)
CLASS: Good morning! (yelling)
SGT. PICKNEY: Ah, that's better. My name is Sgt. Pickney, and my partner in the back in the projection room is Sgt. Hudson. How many of you are planning on attending college? If you're planning on attending college and can use some information on how you can earn anywhere from fourteen to thirty thousand dollars for college. You may want to check that top block to the right of the card. We'll collect the cards after the presentation. (pro video being shown)
LEE HOCHBERG: But for all the audio/video excitement and promises of money, these are tough times for military recruiters.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK, Army Recruiter: I think the average young kid of today really doesn't see the military as an avenue for the American dream. The Cold War is over, life is good, why do they need to join the military?
LEE HOCHBERG: The army's deputy commander for recruiting in 13 western states, Col. Lisle Brook, says the army met its recruiting target in 1995 but will struggle to reach a more ambitious goal of 118,000 new enlists in 1996, that despite a recruiting budget of more than $600 million. Pentagon surveys show the propensity to want to enlist has dropped 38 percent since the Cold War ended and the number of Americans saying they would definitely not want to enlist has gone up 17 percent.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK: Some of it, again, is, is the leftover baggage from the Vietnam War, unfortunately. You know, I can remember John Wayne and all the military movies that he played in. He was kind of a hero of mine when I was growing up. You don't see any more military heroes on the television anymore.
CHERVONNA MASON, Student: You can earn fourteen to thirty thousand dollars to go to school. That's all they said. You know, but you can--if you're smart enough where you can get scholarships--I don't want people to think the army's the way, because they're not telling you, you can go to Bosnia; they ain't tellin' you that. They ain't tellin' you nothing about Bosnia, or, you know, other things. They're just telling you they want you to join the army.
STUDENT: They're now in Bosnia, why do they do that?
SGT. PICKNEY: Why do we go into other countries? Okay. Those, those are questions and issues, right, okay, that we can't answer, okay, because whatever the administration says, that's what we have to do.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK: There will be parents that talk to their sons and daughters and try to discourage them from joining the army because, yes, by going to Bosnia, there's a degree of risk involved.
ANNOUNCER ON PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: A future in engineering, in design.
LEE HOCHBERG: The army has tried to overcome that problem by reprising its long-time theme of job opportunities for recruits.
ANNOUNCER ON PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: The army can give you the opportunity to use the science and math you are learning now, to build a career you can be proud of the rest of your life.
LEE HOCHBERG: But with the economy strong and civilian job opportunities plentiful, that pitch isn't as effective as it once was. If these problems aren't enough, the army is facing a political backlash to its controversial policy on homosexuality.
SPOKESMAN: Discrimination breeds discrimination, and that tolerance and diversity teach tolerance.
LEE HOCHBERG: Some school boards are keeping recruiters off high school campuses in protest of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays and lesbians. Portland, Oregon, school board member Marc Abrams.
MARC ABRAMS, Portland School Board Member: We closed the door on military recruiting because they won't take all of our students. It's our job to protect and create opportunities for all of our students. If they don't do that, they discriminate. We said, no.
LEE HOCHBERG: Portland schools banned recruiters who come from any organization that discriminates and said the military is one such organization. Courts in New York and Connecticut ruled schools in those states can also ban military recruiters. The actions are raising howls not only in the military but even amongst some long-time civil libertarians like Portland School Board Chairman Lucious Hicks.
LUCIOUS HICKS, Portland School Board Member: The act of discrimination is one that I specifically do not support. At the same time, the harm done to a class of people identified as those with a particular sexual orientation is not as great as the good that has been done to those who in this case, people who tend to be of a variety of minority persuasions.
LEE HOCHBERG: With teens getting harder to reach, the military is trying to get to them in less traditional ways.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK: We like to send recruiters into high schools and make them assistant coaches or assistant teachers, substitute teachers, helping to proctor tests, et cetera, et cetera.
LEE HOCHBERG: So that is, in effect, a recruiting device, subtle.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK: Surely. It's part of our long-range strategy to present a positive image of America's army.
SPOKESPERSON: (giving JROTC members orders) Left. Forward march. Left, left, left, left, right.
LEE HOCHBERG: How far to go to present that image has become controversial. Critics question the military's decision to expand by 70 percent the number of junior ROTC units on high school campuses. The army alone has added 500 new units since the Cold War ended, including this one at Oregon's North Salem High School.
SPOKESPERSON: Hard right--together, remember, you're a team. You're dependent on each other for success.
LEE HOCHBERG: The military says the programs teach discipline and self-reliance through drill, marksmanship, and leadership courses, and position retired servicemen as positive role models.
COLONEL DWIGHT MORSE, JROTC Instructor: (speaking to class) You all remember the three leadership styles, right?
COLONEL DWIGHT MORSE: What I try to do here is to help these young people become better Americans, and what I hope is that when they walk out of the program, that they're better Americans than they were when they walked in.
LEE HOCHBERG: Critics say the $150 million program is a recruiting effort in disguise. Indeed, while these North Salem students emphasize nobody's pressuring them to join the military, they do like what they're learning about it.
TRAVIS SUSSE, JROTC Member: I've always looked at it as an option, but now I'm just not necessarily army, I'm looking more towards the air force, but just now what I'm learning is just making me want to join it more.
MICHELLE JACOBSEN, Teacher: They may not necessarily say, I'm recruiting you, but by the types of steps and actions they take, that's, indeed, what they are doing.
LEE HOCHBERG: Seattle schoolteacher Michelle Jacobsen was part of a group that stopped the JROTC unit proposed for a Seattle school last year. She says half of the nation's 270,000 JROTC students end up in military service.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK: JROTC in an indirect way helps us, but we do nothing in a direct manner to use it as a recruiting tool.
SPOKESMAN: (promo video) It started the moment I got here. The word "can't" vanished.
LEE HOCHBERG: Fighting opposition at every turn, the army, with an advertising budget of $71 million, is planning an advertising blitz that it hopes will renew young Americans' focus on patriotism and service.
SOLDIER: (promo video) I'm taught who I am. I'm a soldier.
LEE HOCHBERG: And it hopes its mission in Bosnia turns out to be a further rallying cry.
COLONEL LISLE BROOK: I think Bosnia is going to be a positive marketing tool for us also. If the mission in Bosnia is highly successful and everything happens the way we would like it to happen, then, of course, it's going to be very positive for us.
LEE HOCHBERG: On the other hand, trouble on the ground in Bosnia could mean even more trouble back home in the effort to maintain America's peacetime military.
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