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Issue Date: July 07, 2003
Recruiting is skin deep
For the Marine Corps, less is more when it comes to body art on would-be leathernecks
By Gordon Lubold
Times staff writer
He was a recruiter’s dream — fit, motivated and ready to go green. Solid morals, no past criminal offenses and no history of drug use. Enough college credit to qualify him for meritorious promotion at boot camp.
The applicant had all the attributes the Corps wants in a future Marine, said the New York recruiter who screened him for possible enlistment this past winter. But there was a problem the recruiter’s commanders couldn’t accept: ink, and too much of it.
None of the tattoos was too large or offensive, the recruiter said. But the would-be recruit had seven of them and, these days, that’s too many for the Corps.
Once the subject of a negative stereotype, tattoos — and more extreme forms of body modification — are finding broader acceptance in mainstream society. Tattoos long have been a part of military culture, but Marine recruiters who go “kneecap to kneecap” with today’s youth are finding them more tattooed than ever.
Working an average of 70 hours a week, recruiters continue to make mission, finding enough would-be Marines to keep the Corps on an eight-year run of making quota. But as society increasingly embraces tattoos, recruiters said the Corps is toughening its criteria, making it harder for them to find and sign qualified applicants.
The New York recruiter said he turns away about one applicant a month for tattoo-related reasons. His recruiting substation has rejected about two dozen would-be Marines since October. This at a time when it seems everyone has a tattoo, the recruiter said.
“I’m seeing grandmothers with them, mothers, but kids especially,” the recruiter said.
“We see this as being a big issue because it severely affects how many people we can recruit,” he said. “You are potentially disqualifying a lot of people who are otherwise qualified.”
A matter of interpretation
The Corps’ policy regarding body modification is part of Marine Corps Order P1020.34, which also addresses personal-appearance issues. That policy has been revised and fine-tuned in recent years in response to developments in youth culture. In general, tattoos or brands on the neck and head are prohibited. On other areas of the body, the order states, “tattoos or brands that are prejudicial to good order, discipline and morale or are of a nature to bring discredit upon the Marine Corps are also prohibited.”
Most applicants aren’t walking into recruiting offices already inked with offensive tattoos such as swastikas or other inflammatory images, recruiters said. Instead, most questions that arise while screening would-be recruits stem from the size, location or number of tattoos on an individual.
Such difficulties are more common in the Eastern Recruiting Region, where recruiters say a stricter interpretation of the tattoo policy is enforced. In some cases, applicants cross the Mississippi River (which is the boundary dividing much of the two recruiting regions) and enlist in the Western Recruiting Region.
Marine Corps Recruiting Command officials at Quantico, Va., said they don’t track how many potential Marines are disqualified at the recruiting substation level. But in interviews with a dozen recruiters, officers involved in recruiting and would-be Marines, the word is that the Corps — and the Eastern Recruiting Region in particular — is looking for comparatively clean-skinned recruits.
Command officials said there is no difference in the way the tattoo policy is interpreted between the Eastern and Western regions. In fact, both recruit depots discharged the same number of recruits for tattoos — 25 in each region — during fiscal 2001, said Lt. Col. Stephen Wittle, who heads enlisted recruiting operations for Recruiting Command.
“This really kind of confirms that both regions have the same evaluating process,” he said.
But recruiters interviewed said that while the number of recruits discharged at the depot level may be similar, it does not reflect the number of applicants disqualified long before they set foot on the yellow footprints at recruit training.
And, at the least, region-level oversight of tattoos may well be stricter in the Eastern Recruiting Region, based on a comparison of tattoo-waiver requests submitted to the commanding general in each region.
Since October, Eastern region recruiting stations sent more than 500 tattoo-waiver requests on behalf of potential recruits with questionable tattoos — whether for size, number or subject matter — to Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin, commander of the Eastern Recruiting Region.
While the command approved about 87 percent of those requests, the number submitted is more than three times the number of requests submitted to the commanding general of the Western Recruiting Region. That command, led by Maj. Gen. Jan Huly, had reviewed 144 tattoo-waiver requests as of June 12 and approved 118 of them, or about 82 percent.
“McMenamin holds the line a little tighter on things,” said one Marine officer familiar with the way the Eastern region interprets and enforces tattoo policy and who asked not to be identified.
McMenamin did not provide comment about the tattoo-policy issue, but his assistant chief of staff, Lt. Col. Michael Bowersox, said the command is not being too restrictive in its interpretation.
“If a tattoo is determined to be not within standard, it’s clearly out of the standard,” Bowersox said in a telephone interview from Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C. “We generally give the benefit of the doubt to the kid.”
The point is to maintain good order, discipline and a professional standard for the Corps, Bowersox said.
“We’re not saying we don’t want applicants or recruits with tattoos,” he said. “We’re not saying that at all.”
But when an applicant’s tattoos cross the line, they cross the line, he said.
“If a recruiter disagrees with it, too bad,” he said. “We have a policy we have to enforce.”
Exceeding the threshold established by Recruiting Command “is not necessarily a bar for enlistment,” Wittle said, “but a point of reference where it is reasonable to question whether an applicant meets the standard.”
Go West, young man
Some recruiters, who find otherwise qualified Marines who have been stymied by the tattoo policy, are skirting the issue and finding ways to bring them into the fold — even if it means turning the would-be Marine over to another recruiter.
The Marine officer familiar with the Eastern region said he is aware of several instances in which East Coast recruiters disqualified an applicant because of tattoo issues, only to recommend that the individual go to a state in the Western region to enlist.
The recruiter from New York saw it happen. He submitted a waiver request for his applicant with seven tattoos, but the waiver was denied.
Instead of losing the potential recruit, or letting Army recruiters get him, the recruiter called a fellow Marine at a recruiting station in Louisiana, who gladly enlisted the applicant.
“The applicant bought a bus ticket, got to Louisiana and enlisted in the Marine Corps,” the recruiter said. “I know it happened because he sent us a letter from boot camp thanking us for all the help.”
Based on what he’s seen in his own region and heard from recruiters back East, one Western-region recruiter agreed that an enlistee might have better luck in his territory.
As soon as he mentions the word “tattoos” to recruiter buddies in the Eastern region, he gets an earful, he said. He sees a distinct difference between the working tattoo policy in the Eastern region versus the one he uses in the West.
“The first reaction I get when I [ask] is, ‘It’s a nightmare,’” he said. “They’re getting stricter here, but they’re not as strict as they are there.”
He cited a recent example. In June, recruiting officials reviewed the case of a potential enlistee who had initials and Japanese writing tattooed on his back in characters 8 to 10 inches tall. The officer who reviewed the case told the recruiter “that’s not a big deal,” the recruiter said.
Other would-be Marines rejected by the system aren’t going West, however — they’re taking their fight to Congress.
Every month, the Corps receives hundreds of “congressional inquiries,” letters written by members of Congress on behalf of their constituents. The letters concern awards, records, discharges, benefits and other issues. Since October, Marine Corps Recruiting Command has received 16 inquiries from lawmakers questioning the Corps’ tattoo policy — nine relating to issues in the Western region and seven in the Eastern region, according to Maj. Dave Griesmer, a command spokesman at Quantico.
Clarifying the regs
Recruiting Command issued new guidance June 9 to help recruiters better interpret the Corps’ tattoo policy. In clarifying the policy, it issued four guidelines that are to be used in determining an enlistment candidate’s tattoos — location, size, content and number. Recruiters also have a new screening form to be used in conjunction with the criteria.
The guidelines include:
• Waivers likely will not be granted for any tattoo above the neck area, defined in the guidelines as any portion above the collarbone in the front, or above the first cervical vertebrae in the back.
• Combined tattoo coverage on a particular body part cannot exceed one-quarter of the total size of that body part. So for instance, if someone has two tattoos on his leg, those tattoos together cannot cover more than a quarter of the leg.
• Tattoos that are exposed while wearing the short-sleeve khaki shirt must be no larger than the individual’s hand.
• The recruiting region’s commanding general will review any applicant who has more than four tattoos on his body, regardless of the location of those tattoos.
Recruiting Command officials said the policy, which they consider straightforward already, will be made clearer when a new booklet is issued this fall to recruiters. That booklet will amplify the guidance on tattoos and body piercing by providing examples of acceptable and unacceptable body markings, with Internet links to sites that help recruiters evaluate the content of a tattoo.
There may be a perception among recruiters that the tattoo policy is being interpreted differently between the two recruiting regions, said one former recruiting region commanding general, but that perception may be born of their frustration with the Corpswide policy.
“It becomes very disheartening that you have to go back out on the street and find another contract,” said retired Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney, who ended his career two years ago as the Eastern region’s commander.
Cheney said the difference in the number of waiver requests between the two recruiting regions is curious. But Cheney, who still lives near MCRD Parris Island and is close to McMenamin, said the general likely is doing the right thing.
“He knows what’s good for the Marine Corps,” Cheney said.
Sticking to heritage
Charles Moskos, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University in Chicago who specializes in military matters, said the Corps is right to stick to its guns.
“By being out of step with prevailing fashions, the Corps stays in step with its unique military heritage,” Moskos said. “Marines are expected to be Marines first, not trendy youth. The image of Marines being different and better than the typical young person helps recruitment in the long term.”
That said, society looks at tattoos differently now. William Strauss, a consultant to the military and co-author of the book “Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation,” believes tattoos represent something far different than they did even a decade ago.
What once symbolized rebellion and disrespect for authority now means something else, he said. Strauss believes there is what he calls a “renorming,” a recalibration of attitudes, and tattoos are part of it.
“They’re not intended to shock adults [or] to show the person is an outcast or a ‘goth’ or a punk,” he said. “That’s a change.”
Strauss’ work has been used extensively by Marine Corps Recruiting Command in the development of marketing strategies and advertisements meant to connect with today’s youth.
“Some lines are being drawn about what’s acceptable and what’s not,” said Strauss. “To the extent that people have tattoos or piercings, it’s not an attitude of ‘so there,’ it just looks nice
------------------------------------------------------------ Out of every 100 men, ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are just targets, Nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back." - Hericletus, circa 500 BC ----------------------------------------------------------- 
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