The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, October 12, 2005, Page 6, Image 6
Army plans to boost recruitment in 2006
Robert, Burns
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The
Army has a master plan for
recovering from this year’s
painful recruiting problems
that includes new financial
incentives for enlistees, greater
use of computers, a new way for
recruiters to make their pitch
and a proposed finder’s fee for
soldiers who refer recruits.
The plan was assembled after
Army recruiting began falling
severely short of goals last
spring. The; Pentagon
announced Tuesday that for the
year ended Sept. 30 the Army
was 6,627 recruits short of its
goal of 80,000. It was the
Army’s first shortfall since 1999
and it largest in 26 years.
The Marine Corps, Air Force
and Navy all exceeded their
full-year recruiting goals, the
Pentagon said.
Opinion surveys indicate
that daily reports of soldiers
dying in Iraq have dampened
young people’s interest in
joining the military, prompting
the Army to try new ways to
make the war work in its favor.
For example, since July the
Army has been offering
prospective recruits what it calls
“assignment incentive pay.”
That is $400 a month in extra
pay for as many as 36 months if
an enlistee agrees to join any of
the brigades of the 1st Cavalry
Division or 25th Infantry
Division scheduled to deploy to
Iraq or Afghanistan.
The Army also is
encouraging combat veterans
who return home on leave from
Iraq or Afghanistan to meet
with young people in their
home towns to talk about their
experiences in hopes of
snagging extra recruits. The
Army has found that re-enlist
rates are especially high among
units that have served in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Raymond DuBois, acting
undersecretary of the Army,
spearheaded the effort to
identify new approaches. Some
imitate recruiting practices used
. in the business world, and not
all emphasize financial
incentives.
Parts of this new strategy
were put into practice several
months ago; others await
congressional approval. DuBois
says the shifts began paying
dividends this summer, when
the Army exceeded its
recruiting goals monthly from
June through September, after
missing for four straight
months.
“By virtue of what we have
put in place over the last six to
eight months, I’m confident the
Army will achieve its goal of
80,000 recruits” for the budget
year that began Oct. 1, DuBois
said in an interview Monday.
Some private analysts were
skeptical. Michael O’Hanlon,
defense specialist at the
Brookings Institution, said
Monday that if conditions get
worse the future of the all
volunteer force could be in
jeopardy.
“Unless the situation in Iraq
improves, or unless we
drastically enlarge the pool of
possible recruits in some way —
for example, lowering academic
standards for them, or even
considering an extreme option
like allowing foreigners to gain
U.S. citizenship by serving —
one would have to expect
continued tough slogging for
the Army,” O’Hanlon said.
When the Army saw its
recruiting efforts fall drastically
below expectations — starting
last February and bottoming
out in April with only 58
percent of that month’s goal
achieved — it embarked on
some new approaches.
The most important may
have been the assignment of
extra recruiters. The active-duty
Army added nearly 1,300
recruiters during the year, for a
total of 6,401 as of Sept. 30,
and the Army Reserve added
nearly 600, for a total of 1,347
recruiters, according to S.
Douglas Smith, a spokesman
for Army Recruiting
Command.
The Army also has asked
Congress for permission to raise
the maximum enlistment
bonus from $20,000 to
$40,000.
Among the main features of
the Army’s master plan for
reaching its 2006 recruiting
goal:
— Adjust the way recruiters
frame their sales pitches to
young men and women.
Instead of focusing mainly on
financial incentives and other
tangible benefits of joining the
Army, recruiters are now being
trained to take what some call
the “consultative” approach.
That means addressing the
individual recruits’ personal
hopes and fears, rather than
using the traditional hard sell.
— Put more effort into
recruiting people who have
begun their college careers but
not yet earned a degree, on the
assumption that some would be
interested in taking a hiatus to
try military service.
bohiiig • connnuco PRom i
mind. There, he would work
with counseling the youth and
helping them develop
mentally as well as physically.
He has enjoyed great support
from the social work
department, but still has
bigger goals in mind.
Ideally, Smith wants USC to
resurrect a competitive boxing
program that existed sometime
during the 1970s.
“I want to develop the team
back,” Smith said. “I want to
be able to give the kids hope
that they can win scholarships
to USC and be successful.”
Smith also works with some
USC athletes and others in the
second age group, 19 to 34,
who act as positive role models
for children while learning
boxing themselves.
Smith said he knows well the
motivation that a sport can
give to a teen. He grew up in a
small town in North Carolina,
which he says could have been
found in any inner city.
Surrounded by the temptations
of. drugs and gangs, it was
through athletics Smith was
able to excel.
“Sports kept me out of
trouble. I could easily have
been one of those kids who
was getting in trouble, doing
drugs,” he said. “Sports
caught me and kept me from
falling.”
His talent led him to play
football for USC from 1986
to 1990 while he got a
bachelors degree in social
wofk. After graduation, he
joined the U.S. Navy, where he
excelled in their track and field
program, even qualifying to try
out for the Olympic track and
field team. When that didn’t
work out, he joined the
bobsled team.
“Athletics has and still does
plaf a huge role in my life,”
Smith said.
It’s a role he knows could be
important to the youth who
work out at his gym, too.
USC students who would
like to mentor or tutor any of
the approximately 52 youth
who work out at the gym, or if
they would like to train as
boxers themselves, can call
803-691-6634.
Comments on this story? E-mail
gamecocknews@gwm. sc. edu
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FLU • CODTIMIGD FROIT11
Flu season can start as early as
October and usually lasts until
April.
“It really depends on the
season,” Jankelevich said. “Each
year is different. Last year we
didn’t see cases till pretty late.”
The first cases of the flu
usually come from the West,
beginning in California and
aggressively moving east,
experts said.
“I haven’t heard of any cases
in California yet,” Jankelevich
said. “But there is always the
possibility that with air travel
now that someone from
California who is incubating
the virus could come here and
we could potentially see our
first case here or any place in the
United States.”
Every year a new vaccine has
to be created because different
strains of the flu become more
dominant than others.
“Every year the viruses that
are circulating globally have to
be looked at and sequenced to
determine which are the most
dominate strains and decide
the viruses will change over time
or go through antigenic shift
where they are then able to
replicate in humans.”
The Avian flu is a bird flu like
all of them started out as, and
has remained predominately a
bird flu. It’s known as H5N1. It
currently doesn’t transmit to
humans easily, and it doesn’t
spread from human to human
easily.
“Some changes can occur and
if those changes occur and make
it able to get into humans and
spread more easily from human
to human then it could
potentially become a pandemic,
and that’s what everyone is
concerned about,” Jankelevich
said. “It is behaving very
differendy from other flu
viruses.”
Every year, 5 percent to 20
percent of the population gets
the flu, and students at USC and
other universities have a slighdy
higher risk of contracting the
virus, experts said.
“They tend to live in close
quarters, cough on each other,
drink after each other,” King
said of college students:
“Luckily because of their age,
what they have to change,”
Jankelevich said.
The flu virus contains RNA.
When RNA is replicated,
mistakes can be made in the
process, and those mistakes are
the equivalent to mutations.
“Every time an influenza
virus replicates inside a cell and
makes a bunch of new viruses,
those new viruses will contain
some mutations,” Jankelevich
said. “When those viruses are
released from the cell and
someone is exposed to them,
those viruses will have slightly
different properties.”
Antigenic shift is another way
the virus can change. The shift
is usually a significant change in
the virus. The virus actually
exchanges genetic material with
other influenza viruses, and
those viruses can have
completely different properties.
That has to happen before a
pandemic occurs.
The outbreak of the Avian flu
in Asia is also on the minds of
health officials across the
nation.
“All influenza viruses originate
from birds, but usually don’t kill
them,” Jankelevich said. “It
incubates in a bird’s GI tract and
is spread through feces. Some of
they are at a lower risk for
developing complications of the
flu like pneumonia or other
respiratory infections.”
Even without the vaccine,
there are simple precautions
that can be taken to reduce the
risk of infection such as
covering your mouth and nose
with a tissue when you cough or
sneeze. But the most effective
preventative measure is as
simple as washing up.
“The most important thing is
to wash your hands frequently,”
King said. “That’s the No. 1
preventative measure. Studies
have shown that it is almost as
affective as giving instructions
about personal hygiene and
even receiving the flu shot itself.
Washing your hands for 20
seconds with soap and water is
probably the single most
important thing you can do.”
For those who want to get the
vaccine, the health center will
hold morning and afternoon
clinics to distribute the shot.
Dates for the clinics will be
made public after the vaccine
has been received.
—ISt
Comments on this story? E-mail
gamecocknews@gwm.sc. edu
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