'Don't ask don't tell' speaker reflects poorly on the College

Author: J. S. Woodward

On Feb. 4, I received an e-mail through one of the many distribution lists to which I belong. The message said that the military was coming to campus to recruit students. At first, I merely thought to myself, "That's dumb. I'm sure there are plenty of I-bankers-to-be that want to join the marines before taking on Wall Street." But then the e-mails started to fly, each popped with the word "discrimination."

Curious to know what discrimination means at Middlebury, I went for my highly annotated, ludicrously highlighted and well-worn copy of the College Handbook. In it, I found what I had expected: Middlebury College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, marital status, place of birth, service in the armed forces of the United States, or against qualified individuals with disabilities on the basis of disability.

With a piqued curiosity and perverted love for primary sources, I started to poke around the internet. After a good 20 minutes of searching, I found it - U.S. Code Title 10,654: Policy Concerning Homosexuality in the Armed Forces, more commonly known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Three and half pages of watertight legal mumbo-jumbo later, I had come to a decision. I was not going to sit by and let this blow over. When I arrived at Middlebury in the fall of 2002, I told myself that if I was going to preserve any semblance of sanity, I would have to pick and choose my battles. "Today," I thought, as hyperbolic visions of defiantly standing in the way of an M1 Abrams tank floated through my head, "is my day to fight."

Lucky for me, in the innumerable hours I spent bonding with Google and the Handbook, someone else had already planned a meeting. Sunday, 6:30 p.m., Chellis House.

I arrived, my characteristic 10minutes early, to find Katie Harrold '06.5, one of the co-presidents of MOQA, searching for a light switch. As I helped her look, we discussed how the recruiter was being allowed to come to campus.

Middlebury requires all employers who want to recruit on campus and use our facilities to sign an agreement that states that their non-discrimination policies are parallel to our own. If they are unable to do so, they may hold an open meeting to the College community to explain what their recruitment policy is and how exactly it is discriminatory. After the meeting, whether they say that they refuse to hire Jews, women or even Alaskans, they are permitted to hold recruiting events.

Resolute in our decision to fight, Katie and I began to craft a plan of action. Our greatest weapon was exactly what we came to Middlebury to acquire - knowledge. We would arm the College community with the history of the policy, the monetary and human costs incurred since its inception and, most importantly, with questions. Hard ones.

Why can homosexual soldiers in Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden - coalition partners in Operation: Enduring Freedom - successfully work with heterosexual soldiers, but American soldiers cannot? Why too can American soldiers work with homosexuals from other nations, but not with American homosexuals?

Why were at least seven Arabic translators discharged under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 2002 while the U.S. Departments of Defense and State actively searched out individuals with even meager linguistic abilities to fill hundreds, if not thousands of vacant specialist positions?

Why is the Department of Defense spending $20-40 million a year to discharge soldiers while claiming that we need Americans to step up and join the armed forces?

And most relevantly: What does it mean if Middlebury allows employers who are known discriminators to recruit on its campus?

This last question is the one more important to me. What does it mean? To me, it means that our policy of non-discrimination is nothing but farce. It means that we, as an institution, believe that discrimination is permissible so long as it is not secret. It means that we have become so caught up in our politically correct acceptance of foreign ideas that we have forgotten what we ourselves believe.

I refuse to stand in an Ivory Tower. And I refuse to be silenced like the thousands of American homosexuals serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Middlebury College should not allow organizations who cannot abide by its policy of non-discrimination onto its campus to recruit its students. Period.

J. S. Woodward
An Environmental Studies and Biology Major
Anchorage Alaska