Incentives

- $1,000 per month to enlist before graduation

- Help pay for college

- $40,000 enlistment bonus

- Waiver for recruits who have an arrest record



Tenth-graders swarmed around recruiter Dwayne DeVane as he handed out American flags, water bottles, bumper stickers, key chains and the most sought-after treasures -- decks of cards bearing the U.S. Army logo.

It was career day at Corcoran High School in Syracuse.

While students paid scant attention to representatives of some big local employers, such as National Grid and Iroquois Nursing Home, the fatigue-wearing DeVane drew a steady crowd for two hours.

"When you go into the Army, do they really pay for your school?" asked 16-year-old Phylicia Coley.

"Your schooling will be covered," DeVane assured her.

The Army's pitch is resonating with young men and women in Upstate New York, even as the war in Iraq drags into its sixth year and becomes increasingly unpopular.

The Army's Syracuse Recruiting Battalion persuaded more people to "Go Army" in each of the last two years -- about 2,300 in 2006 and 2,200 in 2007 -- than it did in 2003, 2004 or 2005.

"This part of the country has done very well for us," said Maj. Gen. Thomas Bostick, the Army's national recruiting commander, during a Feb. 29 visit to the region.

With regular Army troops and reservists routinely being deployed multiple times in combat zones in Iraq or Afghanistan, recruiters are under pressure to build the Army this year by 80,000 new regular troops and 26,500 reservists.

Recruiters pitch the Army as the place to find adventure, receive cash bonuses and pay for college. But with more than 4,100 American military personnel killed in Iraq, it's not always an easy sell.

"Parents always want to protect and guide their kids," said Sgt. 1st Class Peter Palumb, a recruiter from Chittenango. "Our recruiters have to overcome a lot of misconceptions about the risks. Today, it's still a good deal; there's just a little more risk involved."

"To recruit an all-volunteer force in a time of war and maintain a decent quality individual coming in, it's hard," said Palumb, the top recruiter of Army reservists in Upstate New York.

Later this summer, the Army plans to tempt Syracuse-area residents with $40,000 bonuses to help them buy a house or start a business if they sign up for a five-year hitch with Uncle Sam.

High school seniors already are receiving $1,000 per month, up to $10,000, if they enlist before they graduate.

The Army also is accepting more recruits with arrest records.

In the Syracuse Battalion, the number of recruits with records has tripled since 2003. Last year, one in 10 of the battalion's recruits needed a "moral waiver" to join.

Recruits with moral waivers are not hardened criminals, said Col. George Lumpkins, commander of the Syracuse Battalion for the past two years.

He said he recently approved a waiver for a young man who, as a high school junior, had helped steal 18 pumpkins from a farmer's field while joy-riding with friends.

"I generally call the applicant and ask, 'What were you thinking about? Why did you do that?'" Lumpkins said. "Then I say, 'Yeah, I think you should enter' or 'No, you have more growing up to do.'"

Lumpkins commands a force of about 200 recruiters who cover a 28,000-square-mile territory stretching from Utica to Buffalo and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Potsdam. His battalion faces a stiff challenge: by the end of the fiscal year, on Sept. 30, sign up more new soldiers than it has in any year since the United States invaded Iraq. From Upstate, the Army wants 2,015 new regular enlistees and 652 reservists, for a total of 2,667.

The battalion probably won't meet those targets, Lumpkins said.

The Army gave the Syracuse Battalion a tougher mission -- an unrealistic one, Lumpkins said -- because of the successes it has had in the last few years.

The battalion's past results are due in part to this region's strong ties to the military, he said.

"There was a military influence here," he said. "There was an Air Force base in Rome for a long time. There are Lockheed Martin, Department of Defense contracting agencies. And of course you have Fort Drum 70 miles up the road."

Recruiters find most of their prospects using lists from school districts containing the names, phone numbers and addresses of high school juniors and seniors. Districts were required by the 2002 No Child Left Behind law to provide that information to the military. Parents and students can sign a form preventing school officials from releasing the information, but most don't.

In the Syracuse City School District, 10 percent of the city's 2,000 juniors and seniors told the district not to release their contact information to the armed forces.

Like a telemarketer, recruiters make dozens of cold calls to teenagers each day.

"Some people, we get them on the phone, and they are not friendly," Lumpkins said. "Some of these 17- and 18-year-olds can be pretty harsh."

"When the young person says, 'No, I'm not interested,' we take their name off," Lumpkins said. "If they say, 'I'm not interested now, maybe later,' we code it for follow-up."

DeVane said he also mines for potential recruits at community centers, Syracuse Crunch games and high school sports events, rock concerts and at Wal-Mart, K-Mart and convenience stores. He said he usually talks to about 25 young men and women per day. His target is two sign-ups per month.

If it's the last day of the month, and he's coming up short, DeVane heads to Carousel Center.

"You run into the most people at the mall," DeVane said.

Cicero-North Syracuse High School has been one of the Army's most fertile recruiting sites in Upstate New York, Lumpkins said. In the C-NS class of about 727 seniors expected to graduate Friday, five students enlisted early in the Army.

David D'Eredita Jr., 18, who will report July 9 for basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., said a recruiter first contacted him after he signed up to receive a free Army T-shirt on the Army's Web site,

www.goarmy.com

.

Recruiters for the armed forces and military academies are invited into C-NS every Monday so that students can talk to them during lunch.

Recruiters rely on high school guidance counselors to steer students to them. At Corcoran, the Army can count on counselor Steve Snook, a Vietnam-era veteran.

The Army sent Snook and 24 other teachers and guidance counselors from Upstate New York on an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip in March to Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C. The event showcased the training and job skills the Army offers teenagers just out of high school.

"For disadvantaged inner-city kids, it's great," Snook said of the Army. "For someone who needs money for college, it should be at the top of things you should consider. They're giving away crazy money now."

The Montgomery GI Bill is one of the biggest selling points the Army has, Lumpkins said.

Nine out of 10 people the Syracuse Battalion recruited into the regular Army last year had no college degrees.

The Army markets itself to high schoolers as a way to pay for college. That's why Coley, the Corcoran 10th-grader with an A average, said she is considering the Army.

"That's the most important consideration," said Coley. "I want to be a psychiatrist. I want to go to a good school."

The GI Bill provides soldiers who have served at least three years with an average of $6,600 per year in education benefits, said Kimberly Hunter, press secretary to Sen. James Webb, D-Va., who introduced the latest expansion of GI Bill benefits that passed Congress in the last month.

Soldiers can receive a maximum of $39,636 for four years of education benefits through the program, the Army says.

But tuition, room and board, and fees at the State University College at Oswego cost $15,605 per year.

In most cases, GI Bill benefits don't come close to covering the costs of attending college full-time, said John View, director of financial aid at the State University College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

That's not the message DeVane gave Corcoran students.

''He said the Army pays for everything," Coley said after talking to the recruiter.

DeVane, who is 27, served in Iraq for a year and has been a recruiter in Syracuse for two years. He's been taking classes online through the University of Maryland. He said he has not had to pay a dime for his college classes.

"You get enough money for school each year," DeVane said.

A spokesman in the Army Recruiting Command's public affairs office said recruiters should not imply the GI Bill would cover all the costs of college without knowing what school a potential soldier plans to attend and the price of attending that school.

In recent weeks, the Senate and House have approved increasing GI Bill tuition benefits from $1,101 per month to a level that covers four years of college up to the level of the most expensive in-state public school, projected to be a monthly average of $1,700.

D'Eredita said he eventually hopes to take advantage of the GI Bill, go to college and become a history teacher.

But he said he signed up for an eight-year hitch as an airborne Ranger without paying much attention to what his Army salary would be, the amount of his bonus, or what education benefits he can earn.

"I always wanted to do it. Since I was a kid," D'Eredita said. "It's the most opportunity for excitement."

Mike McAndrew can be reached at mmcandrew@syracuse.com or 470-3016