What I think is funny is how twisted their argument really is. All their statistics and figures and soundbytes may be somehow representative of the military, but as anyone with even a little experience in the program will tell you, JROTC IS NOT THE MILITARY! Everybody who has had some experience in the schools, with the JROTC program will agree that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is a stupid policy imposed on the military by voters, through Congress, and that Congress is the only governmental body that has the ability to remove it. So why are Amiano and Sanchez taking their fight out on the kids?

San Francisco voters still have every right to protest the war in Iraq, to demand that military recruiters stay out of the city, and I would agree with all of those goals. But JROTC is neither connected with the war in Iraq, nor has any effect on recruitment or whether students end up joining the military. In the last two years, less than 5% of San Francisco JROTC students chose to join the military. Over 80% went on to two or four year colleges. (Both statistics are from official records taken in 2006 by schools tracking the post-high school plans of their graduates) More importatnly, many gay students, including the 2004 Mr. Transgender of San Francisco (and former JROTC citywide commander) Bobby Cheung, have said, in front of the School Board, that JROTC was the one program that made her feel welcome and confident about his homosexuality when she was a female cadet in the program.

Can Ammiano and Sanchez say the same about the rest of San Francisco schools?

Those that don't want to participate in the program have every right to not take the class. But for those who do, the Board resolution would be depriving them of a valuable sorce of confidence, self-estem and leadership training. It should also be said that local military recruiters are veray careful to try to recruit JROTC students, because they know that students in JROTC can see past their one-sided lies. Classes on conflict resolution, appreciatiation of diversity and researching both sides of any disagreement are all part of the standard JROTC curriculum. (Military history and marksmanship are no longer taught in San Francisco JROTC classes.) There is even an interactive course called "Hate Comes Home" in which students must prevent a simulated hate crime against a gay couple at homecoming. There is no program that can fully replace these goals while generating additional funding for the schools. Any program that would attempt to do so would take decades of mistakes and lessons to reach the level of effectiveness that JROTC is today. And with school closures, declining enrollment and a continuing budget deficit on the district, city and state level, who is going to pay for such a program?

JROTC didn't "organize the kids" as Ammiano and Sanchez want to believe. We organized all our own speakers, came to the board meetings and protested because we know what is at stake. Being almost entirely student-run, the JROTC program is led by students who have lived through the program all thoughout high school and are inflamed by the lies and ignorace of the School Board and its anti-JROTC suppporters.

Indeed, the most surprising fact about this whole controversy is that nobody who is against the program has ever seen the program in action. The AFSC and the CCCO, two of the biggest supporters of the Board resolution, are very adept at fighting the military and neoconservative foreign policy. But neither has any experience with JROTC, or for that matter, the public school system. Even at 555 Franklin, none of the current Board members except Jill Wynns, have ever gone and even visited a JROTC program for themselves. (Jill Wynns supports JROTC.) As for myself, I had many teachers when I was in high school, all of whom grew out of the student protests of the Vietnam-era, who came to the School district fiercely opposed to the program. Today, after many years of teaching and seeing JROTC students and alumni in action, they still abhore the policies of the Bush administration, but they also support JROTC. And so do Superintendent Gwen Chan, Director of High School Operations Frank Tom, and openly-gay Senior Chief of Policy and Operations Myong Leigh. All these are educators who work in the schools, with the students on a daily basis. Can the same be said for the mad AFSC and CCCO protesters who are still bound by the narrowminded, black-and-white attitudes of the Vietam era?

If all of the support for the Board resolution comes from outside the school community, what does that say about our society? Thinking that they can waltz into the schools and take something away from students simply because "it's for your own good" demonstrates the same aggressive mentality that blinded Bush and Wolfowitz into sending troops into Iraq "to eliminate a dictator." Nobody is asking them to join JROTC, so they have no right to feel discriminated by a congressioonal policy that in no way affects the public schools. They have no right to "save us" from a program that tells us both sides of the military story, while brainwashing the city with one-sided anti-military propaganda. Just try making a statement against JROTC without refering to the military. The military's goals are wrong, its methods barbaric, and the policy makers who send troops to their death are all elected by the people, or appointed by politicians elected by the people. JROTC students want none of it, and we know from experience that there will be none of it in JROTC.

Those who can speak about the JROTC program recognize that politicians fueled the war in Iraq, that the vast majority of students and JROTC instructors are against the war, and that these two values are not mutually exclusive. Getting rid of JROTC won't change anything about foreign policy, but it will remove a valuable source of two-sided discussion and logical reasoning skills so absent from the anti-JROTC coaliton.

If you think gays and lesbians are sodomites and should not have the right to marry, that's your own narrow-minded problem. Likewise, if you want to feel that students in JROTC are brainwashed, violent monsters who are just itching to go out and kill Iraquis, that's your own narrow minded problem. We don't discriminate against gays and lesbians, so don't discriminate against JROTC.

If you want the program out of the schools, at least make an effort to judge the program for what it is, with your own eyes and with an open mind. Don't judge JROTC in San Francisco by the actions of the military or the policies imposed on gays and lesbians by Congress. Nobody who has seen the program in this light supports the Board resolution, and I have yet to hear an argument against JROTC that isn't as twisted and deceptive as this one.