Friday, December 16, 2005

THE INCORRECTNESS OF MILITARY RECRUITING

(By Democrat Congressman Martin Frost)

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments on a case challenging the legality of the Solomon amendment -- the action by Congress to withdraw federal funding from any college or university that bans military recruiters from its campus. A number of law schools from around the country had challenged the Solomon amendment on the basis that the schools have a constitutional right to ban military recruiters because of their disagreement with the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy involving gays. Under the policy, anyone who admits to being gay is not permitted to serve in the military.

During my 26 years in Congress, I voted for the Solomon amendment and believe it should be upheld by the Supreme Court. My record in favor of rights for gays and lesbians was consistent as a member of Congress. I was a co-sponsor of ENDA, the legislation outlawing discrimination against gays in employment and housing, and I voted against the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. So why do I support the Solomon amendment?

First, and foremost, we need the best and brightest minds in the military, particularly in JAG (the legal branch). We need military lawyers who will question guidelines permitting torture of prisoners that are inconsistent with the Geneva Accords or that are likely to embarrass our government. Also, our military needs cultural as well as ethnic diversity. No one is seriously proposing bringing back the draft, but one of the good things about the military draft was that it served as a great societal leveler. To the extent that any system can, it assured that our military was composed of people from all income levels and all backgrounds. We need the sons and daughters of the privileged just as we need the sons and daughters of middle income America serving our country. A truly diverse military gives everyone in our country a personal stake in decisions made by our civilian and military leaders.

Additionally, there is a degree of a double standard in the current debate. Where were the law schools at our universities and colleges when the military practiced segregation of the races (something finally ended by President Truman)? Did our law schools ban military recruiters as a matter of principle when our military was segregated? Did they ban recruiters when women could only be nurses or serve in separate outfits like the WACS and the WAVES rather than competing with men in most branches as they do today?

And finally, there is somewhat of an air of unreality surrounding this entire debate. Law School students are adults (most in their mid-twenties or older) and are entitled to hear both sides of an issue. Schools that disagree with the military’s policy can provide information to their students about the military’s position on gay rights and can urge them not to join the military until the policy is changed. They can post signs on campus, communicate with the students by email or permit peaceful protesters to hand out anti-military literature. Let the students decide for themselves whether the military’s position on gays is sufficient reason not to volunteer.

I personally believe the current military policy on service by gays is unrealistic and wrong-headed, particularly as we have great difficulty meeting recruiting quotas. Many of our NATO allies have a different policy for their own military. But my personal views are irrelevant when it comes to the decision by a young person as to whether he or she should volunteer for military service. Major universities and colleges receive millions of dollars in federal research grants. It’s not too much to ask that, as a condition to continuing to receive this assistance from the government, that they permit the military to come on to their campuses and make their case. No one is forcing our young people to serve, but they should at least have the option of considering military service as a career choice.



HUGE COSTS OF DISABILITY CORRECTNESS

Helicopter pilots the world over fly in fear of the dreaded Jesus Nut. A part on all rotor-powered craft, the Jesus Nut is so critical that, if it were ever to pop off while in flight, the helicopter would dive faster than a ripped parachute. These days, IT officials at Bell Helicopter Textron Inc.-and all big government contractors, for that matter-have a new version of the Jesus Nut to worry about. It's Section 508 of the 1998 Federal Rehabilitation Act. Passed into law Dec. 21, Section 508 requires all IT used by federal employees-including Web pages posted by federal agencies and their contractors such as Bell, in Ft. Worth, Texas- be accessible to disabled individuals. That means, for example, that blind users must be able to access both text and nontext elements of government and contractor Web sites. It even requires that office equipment, such as fax machines and photocopiers, be accessible to disabled individuals. Contractors that don't comply by June stand to lose their slice of the federal government's $42 billion fiscal year 2001 IT budget.

One of the first broad federal mandates of Web site accessibility for the disabled, Section 508 is forcing government agencies and contractors alike to make major investments in Web site redesign. Total Section 508 compliance spending, government estimates indicate, will end up being $100 million. Some 11,000 contractors will be affected, about 65 percent of them small businesses. Some government contractors and federal agencies are being forced to replace entire sites from the ground up to achieve compliance, a pretty painful introduction to accessibility issues, experts say. And, they add, there is a lesson even for enterprises not directly affected by Section 508: Build disabled accessibility into your site now to avoid big disruptions and expenses later.....

Costs be damned: When bell helicopter first approached the project of becoming Section 508-compliant in mid-2000, it found that, like many contractors and federal agencies, it had its work cut out for it. Indeed, less than 50 percent of its 80,000 Web pages were accessible. But whether to tackle the work of retagging and reorganizing the metadata on its pages to make it accessible to the disabled was never even a question for Bell officials.

The company sells more than $500 million worth of helicopters and other hybrid fixed-movablewinged aircraft yearly-a "fairly substantial chunk" of which comes from federal customers such as the military, according to John Wood, a Buchanan Associates Inc. consultant who's serving as Bell's managing consultant for e-business. Jeopardizing that business by failing to comply with Section 508 was not an option for Bell.

But complying wasn't inexpensive or easy. Part of the problem, Wood, in Ft. Worth, pointed out, is that different Bell Web pages had different levels of disabled access built in, depending on who developed them. At Bell, as at many companies, Internet pages are the accumulation of the long-term work of a myriad of company developers-many of whom, despite educational efforts by accessibility champions such as the World Wide Web Consortium, remain ignorant about the simple procedures a developer can take at the design stage to integrate accessibility into a Web site. "A lot of times, developers, they're fairly tunnel-vision toward disabled folks using the Web," Wood said. "A lot of folks don't even know there are devices out there for the blind to read Web pages."

That design-stage ignorance is coming back to haunt contractors like Bell, which must now clean up for Section 508 compliance. Between Wood and a few colleagues, Bell Helicopter has had about two-and-a-half full-time workers tweaking code since the middle of last year. Wood said the work should be wrapped up by summer. The work entails changing all media references to include Alt tags-popup windows that describe nontext elements of a Web page-as well as adding metadata on each page to improve search engine capabilities for the disabled and nondisabled.

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