Home > High School Student Exposes Recruiters’ Desperation to Meet Quota

High School Student Exposes Recruiters’ Desperation to Meet Quota

by Open-Publishing - Saturday 30 April 2005
8 comments

Two Army recruiters in Golden have been suspended from their jobs while military officials look into allegations the two men used improper tactics to get an Arvada high school student to sign up for duty.

The Denver Army Recruiting Battalion, which oversees recruiting for Colorado and parts of three other states, launched the investigation Friday after CBS 4 News broadcast a report the previous night about the alleged improprieties.

The report featured David McSwane, an Arvada West High School honors student and editor of his school newspaper, who was "curious" to see what recruiters at a Golden recruitment facility would do if he told them he wanted to join the Army as a high school dropout with a serious marijuana problem.

McSwane, 17, said he had read about the challenges the military was facing in recruiting and wanted to find out "how desperate they really are."

"Being my age and in high school, you see recruiters all the time. It’s something that’s affecting people my age," he told The Rocky Mountain News Friday.

Starting in January, McSwane met with two recruiters in Golden several times and secretly taped a series of phone calls with them. On the tapes, one recruiter is apparently heard encouraging McSwane to create a fake high school diploma to cover for the fact that he had dropped out.

"It can be like Faith Hill Baptist School or something - whatever you choose," the recruiter said.

McSwane said he bought a phony diploma, complete with a transcript, from a Web site for $200. He was told that it passed the Army’s academic evaluation.

"At one point, I thought he would look up my academic record, but he never did," McSwane said.

McSwane got a friend to film another recruiter driving him to a store to purchase a detoxification kit to rid his system of supposed marijuana traces.

By the middle of March, McSwane was asked to sign a routine paper attesting that everything he had told recruiters was true.

"He wanted me to strip down and get on the scale and sign some papers -I walked out . . . and never came back," he said.

McSwane’s story was published with his principal’s approval in the high school newspaper, The Westwind, on March 17.

Debbie Cannon, public affairs chief for the Denver Army Recruiting Battalion, wouldn’t comment on the allegations. She expected the investigation to be completed within 30 days.

"Recruiter misconduct is not acceptable and it violates honor, duty and trust," Lt. Col. Jeffrey Brodeur, the battalion’s commander, said in a statement.

McSwane said he got the feeling from the recruiters he talked to that they were desperately trying to sign him up by a certain date so that they could meet a monthly quota.

"I’d like to see the Army investigate this thoroughly, not just two guys in this office," he said.

aguilarj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2550

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/dr...

Forum posts

  • The military always investigates themselves, and they always find themselves innocent of any charges....ha ha ha ha ha.

  • exactly, they will never find themselves "guilty" unless there are pictures like the prisoner torture, and then only the rank and file will be punished ... they feel they are above the law and they know we know the real truth... and even say to us ... "what are you gonna do ... we have the guns and authority" america has fallen into despotism and tyranny. maybe it always has been... just that we see it clearer now.

  • There should be only one law applicable for all crimes. War courts should not be allowed!
    The same applies to other institutions like the catholic church which were allowed to settle the
    cases of child abuse.
    Also politicans, police and government institutions should not have immunity whenever they infringe the law.

  • How does this help the USA. If a draft happens, I hope McSwane is the first one drafted. Then we can see this soory individual run to Canada. He should be considered a terriost.

    • Fascist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist (in case you’re too ignorant to understand what I mean)

    • He is still anti-american in my book.

    • Yes Bush is very anti-American I agree. He has tried to entirely ruin our country and take down our economy. He has gotten us into trillions of dollars of needless debt until we are practically bankrupt, he has murdered thousands and thousands of people with his mass murder wars. He is immoral by any credible religious standards (the anti-Christ) he has taken away our good reputation around the world while making us LESS safe, he will do nothing about the open borders since his class needs to employ cheap labor while he ships our jobs elsewhere, and now he wants to cheat us all on our social security pay while he gives his rich friends another tax cut, they all need more money (or possibly all of it) since they already own 95% of the wealth here. A good system that allows the unstoppably greedy to more than prosper while the masses get to pay the bills. And the stupids who are in the middle class buy all of his bullshit that gets them nothing but a kick in the pants with the rest of us.

  • This stupid kid really doesn’t have a clue... He has just ruined the lives of 2 fine American Soldiers, and it was all because he had a deceptive thought, and had nothing else better to do with his life. First of all, this little punk-ass kid lied completely from the first minute that he walked into the station. Yes, I agree that the Recruiters were wrong for doing this, but he was completely wrong. In a few months this young man will be in college somewhere, and his life will be just peachy. Then on the other hand, those individuals that he has completely screwed will either be in a military prison or will be Dishonorably Discharged and will have to completely start all over in a different career. I hope that they do bring back the draft, that way the recruiter’s lives will be easier, and they can go home early and spend some special and well deserved time with their loved ones. And David McSwane is drafted by either the Army or the Marines and made an Infantry soldier and then send his little unpatriotic ass to Iraq.