My daughter — my high school freshman age daughter — started receiving Hooah!, a quarterly publication produced for the National Guard. This leads to a couple of question, the first of which is how did they get her name on a mailing list. I’m 99.9% sure she didn’t request it, meaning they had to get the info from another source, the identity of which is unknown and therefore disturbing. I will not go into a long diatribe about invasion of privacy issues, but I sure hope the school (or anyone else) is not supply such information without consent (which they obviously have done).
Be that as it may, the cover of the Spring ’08 issue features Boston Red Sox pitcher Josh Beckett. I’m not sure why, although I am fairly certain it’s not because he has ever been a member of the Guard (where as another piece profiles Sgt. Jill Stevens, a member of the Utah Army National Guard as well as Miss Utah).
The article is written by Spc. Miko Holloran and features a quiz with such true/false questions as “Josh Beckett can throw a curveball faster than an M16 bullet” (didn’t know M16 bullets could through curveballs); “The Guard supports soldiers who are professional athletes”; “The Guard does not encourage its soldiers to stay physically fit after basic training”; and “Soldiers in the Guard do not get scored on how well they perform on physical fitness tests.” Oh, forgot to mention, it’s an on-line quiz, which means you probably have to give up even more personal data.
My apologies for the quality of the picture. It will have to suffice until I have a chance to scan my copy.
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Mr. Kaplan you should have a little more class and indicate that the statements regarding the National Guard fitness is false. Although you quoted from SPC Holloran your obvious exclusion of the truth leads readers to false conclusions. The National Guard highly encourage soldiers and airmen to remain physically fit. Traditional Guardsmen are tested annually on their physical fitness while Active Guard Reserve members are tested semi-annually. The physcial fitness tests are the same ones administered by the Active Army and Air Force and Guardsmen must receive a passing score to remain in the military.
As far as privacy, military recruiters are allowed to talk with students on school campus and I’m sure your daughter gave information without knowing that the recruiter would add her name to a mailing list.
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