Many high school and college students are flooded with recruitment mail from various branches of the armed forces. I am a senior at Swarthmore College (certainly as unlikely a launching pad for a career in the military as Yale) and despite the fact that my PSAT scores are nothing more than faded numbers in my academic past, I am still the recipient of this peculiar military version of junk mail. I lump it in with the credit-card offers, magazine-subscription solicitations and sweepstakes announcements that commonly litter the mailboxes of those my age.

Ugelow, it seems, is not so much concerned about the tax dollars spent on his recruitment as he is amused by the supposed naivete of the military. After all, Ugelow implies in a thinly veiled subtext, only cretins enlist in the armed services, and Ugelow is no lowbrow, having, as his accompanying biography mockingly explains, "two years remaining on his four-year commitment to Yale University."

If Ugelow wishes to engage in the elitist conception of the military as nothing more than a refuge for academic non-achievers, he should do so honestly and openly without falling back on the tired ploy of feigned civic concern.

In the fall of my junior year in high school, I took the standardized Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), which most colleges use to identify potential applicants. Check the box that authorizes the testing service to release your name and the colleges hit you with a flurry of brochures, videos, applications and scholarship offers.

What I didn’t know was that the Defense Department would seize upon the scores, too. Much like their academic counterparts, the armed services pore over those scores for potential recruits. And, for some reason, the Navy’s computer decided I was a potential recruit.

For the past four years, the Navy has spent considerable time, effort and taxpayer money courting me. Only I didn’t want to be courted.

The search-and-recruit mission began innocently enough, with brochures about various Navy programs. Did I know about ROTC? Had I considered the GI Bill? Were there any other acronyms they could explain for me?

The Army and Air Force each sent me mailings from time to time, but never with the same frequency or volume as the Navy. It was not unusual to receive several Navy mailings in the same week or even the same day. Sometimes it would be the same letter but on different colored paper.

Then the calls began.

I had come home from school one day when I received a recruiting call from a Marine sergeant. He had obviously misplaced his list of a few good men and was trying me instead.

"I’m calling to talk to you about joining the Marines," he began.

"Well, I’m really not interested, but thanks," I replied and started to hang up.

But my sergeant didn’t take rejection as well as the other salesmen who call our house.

"Why is that?" he wanted to know.

I tried to explain. I get seasick. I can’t swim very well. I’m a little uneasy about making a four-year commitment at this point in my life.

"Uh, that’s a six-year commitment, son," the sergeant interrupted.

Fine, six years. I told him how antsy I was about signing up for anything where they put you in jail if you leave without permission. One acronym the Navy didn’t need to explain to me was AWOL.

Then I casually mentioned I had other plans.

"What, you planning on going to college?" he demanded. From his change in tone, it was clearly what a wimp would do.

Well, yes, I was. And if I changed my mind, I was quite confident the Navy would still be there.

I listened to the sergeant’s pitch awhile longer. When he would not allow me to end the conversation gracefully, I hung up. At least he would take me off his list, I figured. But the calls, and the mailings, continued.

By June of my senior year, most colleges had stopped sending me materials. A few brochures and applications trickled in over the summer from recruiters hopeful that I would change my mind, but most colleges had already moved on to the new crop of high school seniors. Even the Army dropped its efforts a few months into my freshman year at college.

But not the Navy. Convinced I was playing hard-to-get, the mailings poured into my house. My parents would just stack them up on my bed when I came home for vacation. We would all have a good laugh, I would throw them out, and then I would go back to school.

When I came home for the summer, the mailings and the calls continued. After receiving three identical mailings on the same day last summer, I had enough. For the first time, I called the number on the brochure. I told the operator straight out: I wanted off.

It’s not a response they get very often at the Navy Recruiting Command’s Philadelphia district office.

"You want what?" the operator asked me. "Why would you ever want to do that?"

"I have no real plans to join the Navy any time soon," I explained. "And I know it takes a lot of resources to keep sending me this stuff. As a taxpayer, I just felt that maybe the resources could be put to better use."

She transferred me to someone. He transferred me to someone else. Finally, they promised they would remove me from their list and stop sending things to my house.

Happily, I hung up. No more calls. No more mailings. And I had saved the taxpayers money.

After all, multiply the postage the Navy spent on me by the roughly 2 million high school students who graduate each year. We’re not talking small change here. Cut back on these mailings and the Navy would be a lot closer to that new Seawolf submarine it’s been clamoring for.

When I returned to school in the fall, despite the district office’s promises, the recruiting efforts continued.

Last spring, I received a call from a Marine sergeant. My mother told him what she had told all the others: I was away at school and still had no plans to sign up. She later brought in some of the mail to show to someone at her office who happens to be married to a rear admiral. The co-worker passed it on to her husband, who passed it to one of his deputies.

In June, my mother received a three-paragraph notice from the deputy commander of the Navy Recruiting Command. The commander wrote that he had verified that my name had been removed from all mailing lists of "Department of Defense advertising organizations." He then apologized to her for "any inconvenience this matter may have caused you."

Although the letter was a single sheet of paper, he sent it in an 8 1/2 by 11 envelope. The cost to the taxpayers? Forty-three cents.

It’s curious that the letter should be sent to her and not to me. It’s even more curious that it’s her inconvenience that the Navy regrets. Either way, I just hope the deputy commander really was sincere. Because he’ll soon have a chance to prove he’s a man of his word.

My younger brother, whose grades are far better than mine, takes the PSAT this fall.

—-

You can’t call him at Esquire magazine, though. He doesn’t work there and never has, according to the company. Try some of his other 17 e-mail addresses, including "hertz.com" and "trump.com," and you’ll get the same result. He doesn’t work for those companies either, spokesmen said.

But Cashel does own the words they might want to use in their cyberspace addresses.

Cashel — a Kalorama resident who works at the government-funded Eurasia Foundation here — declined to be interviewed for this article. He is among a growing number of people and companies that have registered hundreds of Internet addresses mimicking some of corporate America’s most fiercely guarded trademarks.

Only with an address can a company send and receive e-mail on "the Net." Just as street signs provide directions to buildings, Internet addresses direct information to the right individual. If your name is Mike and you work at XYZ Corp., your Internet address might be mike@xyz.com. Unless, of course, somebody else had already registered @xyz.com. Then you would have to be mike@elsewhere.com.

The unique addresses are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis by an administrative body called InterNIC. Anyone can register any address for free. The only restrictions are Internet naming guidelines, which limit the number of characters and require that a descriptive suffix be included. All business addresses, for instance, must include the suffix ".com," short for "commercial."

The rush by Cashel and others to register potentially valuable names may cost businesses millions. As more companies venture on-line, they may find their name of choice already has been registered by a speculator, a competitor, an employee or even a company in a different industry with a similar name. At stake is corporate identity in the information age.

Companies whose potential names have been registered by others will have three choices: Pick another name, buy the rights to the original one or sue.

"There are big corporate names being registered, and it appears that it is individuals and not companies who are responsible," said Mike Walsh, the president of Internet Info, a Falls Church market research firm that tracks corporate use of the Net.

Already, 17,000 ".com" names have been registered, and that number may swell to 50,000 a year from now, Walsh said.

A search of InterNIC’s public registry of names reveals several Fortune 500 companies whose names or products have been registered by someone else. Besides Cashel’s names, already taken are "coke.com," "startrek.com," "nasdaq.com," "cosmo.com" and "windows.com." Some companies have reserved scores of addresses that might be valuable someday, such as "pizza.com," "sex.com," "god.com" and "money.com."

Spokesmen for Hertz Corp., the Nasdaq stock market, Viacom Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and other companies and organizations contacted said they were unaware that the names had been registered. Several said the companies would investigate possible legal action to claim the names.

Like many legal issues in cyberspace, there is no clear precedent on whether traditional trademark law protection extends to Internet addresses.

"Addresses are problematic. The trademarks statute forbids the registration of geographic addresses, but computer addresses may not fall within those limitations," said Lynne Beresford, the trademark legal administrator at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

"It’s very much like getting a vanity plate," said Jonathan Groves, manager of information services at the Internet Co., a Cambridge, Mass., Internet provider that registered the Nasdaq and Windows addresses for clients.

Several intellectual property and trademark lawyers said that companies whose names are taken may have pretty strong cases.

"Trademark rights are based upon use. If you make any other use of a name that could confuse the public, that’s trademark infringement," said John Hornick, an attorney who specializes in such matters.

"If you take an Internet address, you’re saying, ‘I’m going to take someone else’s name and register it,’ " he said. "You can certainly argue that might confuse the public, and could probably sue and win."

Merely registering a company’s name could prompt legal action, said Bruce Teller, outside counsel for the International Trademark Association. While not trademark infringement, registering a name could be considered trademark dilution because the commercial value in a name is diminished, he said.

Two cases are in the courts. In one, the MTV cable channel is suing Adam Curry, a former MTV host, over his use of the address "mtv.com." Curry originally offered to set up the address for MTV, but the network declined.

With MTV’s knowledge, Curry registered the name for himself and helped the network incorporate it into MTV programming. Only after Curry tried to stage an on-air resignation in April did MTV file suit to claim the name.

While the matter is in litigation, Curry has agreed to direct to another site users who try to address mtv.com.

Lawyers said the case probably will focus on MTV’s initial decision not to register the name, and not on trademark issues.

In the other case, the Princeton Review test preparation company registered the address "kaplan.com" in reference to its largest competitor, the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center. Although Princeton Review President John Katzman says the registration was a joke, the company activated the address with on-line advertisements for Princeton Review.

Kaplan, which is a unit of The Washington Post Co., filed suit. Kaplan President Jonathan Glayer said the company has since registered "about 20" variations on the Kaplan name and its products. The two companies have agreed to arbitration later in the year; in the meantime, Princeton Review has deactivated kaplan.com.

Princeton Review’s "joke" was certainly an expensive one. Katzman estimates his legal bills will run between $ 10,000 and $ 20,000.

Undeterred, he says he may have another joke in store for Kaplan. He’s considering registering the address "kraplan.com" and promoting it instead.

To avoid ending up in Kaplan’s position, companies can take preventive measures. Katzman himself urges, "Everybody should go out and register their company’s domain name right now."

Other suggestions from lawyers include trademarking an un-stylized company logo — because Internet addresses are plain text, a company’s stylized logo may not be admissible in an infringement case — and collecting evidence that a similar name causes public confusion. Misdelivered e-mail might be one way of documentation, attorney Hornick said.

Most of all, companies should not count on Internet providers to protect a name when someone else tries to register it — because most won’t.

"We can’t act as an arbiter," Internet Co. President Robert Raisch explains. "We would be placed in a position of qualifying every domain name for every country around the world."

Now a growing number of "community" or "civic" computer networks are springing up around the country to tie local people together and hook them into the Internet for free.

Last week, Maryland’s planned state-wide "Sailor" system, which makes the Internet’s so-called gopher services available at no cost, began limited operation in the Baltimore area. Officials hope to start making it available in Washington’s Maryland suburbs in September.

Sailor also will offer subsidized rates — $ 100 per year — for full access to the Internet, which is used by an estimated 20 million people worldwide. Commercial Internet services often charge three times that.

Sailor will join a more established Washington area community network, CapAccess, which in a year and a half has attracted more than 9,000 users by offering electronic-mail connections, limited access to the Internet and other services.

Since 1986 when Case Western Reserve University launched the Cleveland FreeNet, community networks have sprung up in many North American cities. The goal is to foster local communications and make sure that the poor and public service groups aren’t priced out of the electronic future.

They are free in the sense that public television is. People can sign up for nothing, but once aboard they are typically urged to donate money or time. Some services, such as Maryland’s Sailor, receive tax dollars.

"The whole idea of a civic network is new to everybody, including those who think they understand what it means," said Mark Bolgiano, a Greater Washington Board of Trade vice president who is studying a partnership with CapAccess.

"The number of people among our members who know what Internet is is still pretty low," he said. "CapAccess is even harder to understand."

Any area resident with a computer, modem device and communications software can reach CapAccess with a local telephone call. The number is 202-785-1523. Newcomers can log in under the name "guest", using "visitor" as the password.

People who already have Internet connections can reach CapAccess by using the telnet command to reach the address cap.gwu.edu.

Based at George Washington University, the service is geared toward helping users new to "the Net" get up to speed quickly. Instead of grappling with confusing typed commands, they can move around the service by picking numbered options from a menu or by typing shortcuts, such as "go post" to read e-mail.

There are on-line guides to appropriate Net conduct — dubbed "netiquette" — and other hints, such as how to select a good password. For users who would prefer face-to-face help, volunteers conduct free weekend training sessions.

CapAccess has targeted local schools, libraries, governments and social service groups by letting them use the service to promote their activities and collaborate with similar groups. Volunteers will help any such group post information or set up on-line "discussion groups" in which people carry on electronic dialogues.

Arlington County, for instance, has put a government information center on the system. The Montgomery County Public Library put its card catalogue on-line, and the Kennedy Center added performance schedules.

Several local schools put PTA minutes on-line and some churches have started posting sermons. Virginia Sen. Charles S. Robb set up a "virtual office," believed to be the first of its kind, which allows constituents to skim his voting record and official policy statements.

"It’s a good forum for people to look at what Senator Robb has been saying and doing," said Matt McGowan, Robb’s office manager.

The CapAccess experiment has created "new cross-community connections" between governments and community service groups, said CapAccess Executive Director Taylor Walsh.

"If there’s an information resource in Montgomery County that helps people who are homeless, there’s no reason for Arlington or Prince George’s to replicate that database and pay for its implementation if they can get access to it through the network," he said. "We’re already beginning to see that kind of thing happening."

Unlike many computer services, which tend to be used overwhelmingly by white males, the CapAccess user base is a fairly representative sampling of the region. At a recent membership meeting, half of the people attending were women, and almost a third were black. Overall, about 35 percent of CapAccess users are female, Walsh said. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of CompuServe and America Online users are women.

To provide true public access to the system, CapAccess has started a "recycling" campaign to refurbish old computers from corporations and governments and redistribute them to libraries, schools and community centers across the region.

"We need to put access points in the hands of the disadvantaged so [CapAccess] can be a tool for the many, not the few," said attorney Jack Young, a CapAccess volunteer.

Funded initially by grants from the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting Projects with technical assistance from George Washington University, CapAccess now relies entirely on donations and volunteers such as Young to cover its $ 300,000 in annual costs.

This collaboration could serve as a model for national networks, users say.

"We are doing exactly what the government wants to do," said the Rev. Fred Williams, a board member. "Our ‘family’ is building a better community through technology. What we’re doing is replicable and exportable throughout the whole country."

Adler was not foiled by a test administrator noticing that the person taking the test was not the person pictured on Adler’s driver’s license. Nor was he done in by the Educational Testing Service’s analysis of his test scores for irregularities. Instead, Adler was thwarted by the one factor he should have had the most control over: himself.

If they had just kept the scheme to themselves, only Adler and co-conspirator Donald Farmer (who took the test for Adler) would have known how easy it was to bypass one of ETS’s most stringent security protocols. Instead, Adler revealed his plan to classmates, and one of them apparently alerted ETS. This tip, coupled with a question from a college admissions officer about a discrepancy between Adler’s test results and grades, ultimately led ETS to challenge his scores.

The lesson of how easy it could have been to cheat on the SAT has not been lost on college-bound and scholarship-seeking students, who know that the stakes are enormous — and they extend beyond the obvious influence on whether a student gets into a particular college. For student-athletes, NCAA rules require a minimum SAT score of 700 in order to play collegiate sports. For other students, there are millions of dollars in academic scholarships on the line as well.

To be sure, few find it necessary to craft elaborate ruses like Adler’s, but some area high school students say they have discovered how to take advantage of ETS security loopholes without getting caught. There are, in short, many ways to cheat without really trying.

In their last years of high school, students come in contact with four types of ETS examinations: the SAT; the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), a scaled-down practice version of the SAT; the Achievements, which test mastery of specific subjects on a high school level; and the Advanced Placement (AP) exams, which test mastery of specific subjects on a college level.

One method of beating the system on SATs and PSATs is to confer during the break between the math and verbal sections. Then, test-takers can go to the bathroom or get something to eat. Often, anxious students will gather in the halls and compare answers. Although students are not permitted to work on an earlier section once time has been called, a single additional correct answer can result in a 20- to 30-point increase in a score. For many, the temptation proves too great.

"People go out into the halls during the break and talk about the answers," said Sidwell Friends School senior Peter Wallace. "They go back in, and when there is no proctor around, they make changes."

For the Achievement tests, the problem of comparing answers is even worse. The one-hour Achievements can be taken in a myriad of subjects, ranging from biology to modern Hebrew. During the testing period, students can take up to three tests in almost any order they choose. In between, there is also a break in which students may leave the test room.

Thus, it is possible for students to get answers to tests that they have yet to take.

"You could arrange with a friend . . . that if you were taking, say, two Achievements and you were going to screw up the math Achievement really badly, you could have your friend take his math Achievement first. Then, he could tell you about the problems," Sidwell senior Greg Humphreys said. "I have even heard of people writing down answer lists and trading during the break."

Probably the most common form of cheating is violating the time limits by quickly finishing sections where you’re strong and going back where you’re weak, says Sidwell senior Christian Hicks. Referring to the TSWE (Test of Standard Written English, one of six SAT sections), Hicks said, "Although I have never done it . . . you can complete the TSWE in 10 minutes and use the rest of the time to finish other sections. Nobody really cares about it, and it’s downright sensible to sacrifice your performance there and improve your performance on other parts of the test."

Some tactics are more innovative.

"I know one person who had one of those little electronic dictionaries and brought it into the test room," said Sidwell’s Wallace. "He must have hidden it in his coat."

Humphreys said, "On the physics AP, you are allowed to use any kind of calculator you want, including my calculator in which I can program every single physics formula, type pages of notes or type definitions of words. I can do whatever I want. The proctors are like ‘Now clear your calculator’s memory.’ What are they going to do, go around and check it?"

So it’s easy to cheat on the most important tests of high school? ETS Division Director for College Board Programs Irving Broudy says no. Existing security measures should prevent students from such methods of cheating, he said — if proctors enforce ETS rules.

"Two million students take the SAT every year. Less than two in a thousand cases are ever questioned in any way," Broudy said. "Most students — the huge majority — take the test seriously, are honest, and follow instructions."

Broudy also said, "When we have reason to believe that there is a problem of copying, we have a way of comparing wrong answers or comparing answers in general. If one finds a pattern of responses — especially wrong answers — then there’s an indicator that something improper may have occurred. So there are lots of built-in checks."

Broudy would not say, however, whether these checks were done at random, to all students’ answer sheets or only to those whose scores had been questioned.

"We prefer not to give out specific information on procedures that might essentially provide a means by which students might want to subvert them," he said.

With two million students being tested, Broudy added, "I wouldn’t be surprised if there were rare cases where problems occurred that might not be detected. But we think that overall, the system works, and works pretty well."

Among the cases that have apparently gone undetected are those of students comparing answers.

"I have not heard that one before, to tell you the truth — I mean the use of the break," said Broudy. "But part of my job — and our job in general — when we hear comments like this is to review them and look at them and if there is sufficient evidence to reconsider our procedures."

ETS President Gregory Anrig said, however, that current security measures are reasonable because cheating is not widespread.

"If there were widespread cheating on the SAT, then one would say, ‘Well, over time the effect of this would be that the correlation between SAT scores and freshman grades would change.’ The colleges regularly do validity studies to check that. In fact, the correlation has not changed over time," he said.

"I’m not denying that there’s cheating," Anrig added. "I do say that we have procedures in place to guard against cheating and we pursue them vigorously."

Charles Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown University, also thinks current safeguards are adequate. "Given that . . . [cheating] can happen, there are a lot of ways that it can be identified through the admissions process. I don’t think that we would be particularly interested in them creating a Gestapo-like environment. I think that would be going overboard."

But available data — and the testimony of students themselves — paint a less optimistic picture. According to recent surveys done by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Rey, Calif., three out of five high school students and one in three college students admitted to cheating at least once on an exam — though the survey does not single out the College Boards. As reported by The Washington Post’s Richard Morin, "American kids are lying, cheating and stealing in what some researchers fear are unprecedented numbers."

"I can tell you from experience at Churchill," said Churchill senior Ivan Snyder, "it’s all over the place. Not hard-core cheating, substituting, Larry Adler-type cheating, but going back in sections and talking about it during the break. Even when I took the exam, I heard people talking about the test, telling people what was coming up . . . . Both times I took the SAT, I saw it. I was sort of shocked because I thought, ‘You know, this is the SAT. This doesn’t happen.’"

Many scholarship competitions, such as the National Merit Scholarship Competition, rely heavily upon a student’s standardized test scores. In the National Merit competition, for instance, semifinalists are selected solely upon their PSAT scores. While they may not actually receive a scholarship from the competition, semifinalist status helps students in many other ways.

"That is a very valuable scholarship and is one of the most prestigious scholarships in the country," said Cinthia Schuman, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest). "It opens up many doors — both financially and in terms of the schools that you can choose from — in terms of educational opportunities. The fact is that it is wrong to place so much emphasis on the PSAT, with all of its flaws. Students recognize that there is a game-like aura to the test because it doesn’t reflect the kind of skills they actually need in college, like reading, research and writing."

A National Merit Scholarship Corporation spokeswoman declined to comment, referring all questions about test security to ETS.

Because of standardized tests’ tremendous importance, some students argue that ETS should take a more active role in combating cheating. "What they should do is they should have two separate sheets, one for math and one for verbal, and pick up the verbal one in between breaks," suggested Sidwell senior Paul Hodgdon. "That way you can’t go back and change your answers. Or have more proctors, because Sidwell has two during the PSATs. For 100 people, that just doesn’t work."

Anrig warns, however, that while such measures might crack down on cheating, they would punish honest test-takers as well.

"I don’t believe you should treat all 1.6 million kids that take some form of the admission testing program as if they’re wrong-doers," Anrig said. "One could have procedures that would be sure to guard against any possible eventuality," he said, but that would mean treating the test-taker "not as a student who deserves to be treated properly, but as a prisoner in a correctional facility."

Bernard Noe, Sidwell’s Upper School principal, said, "If in fact — and there really is no hard evidence . . .cheating is widespread, that’s a sad statement about our students’ culture. It’s sad for the future that if you are willing to cheat on your SATs, you’re probably willing to cheat on your taxes or anything else that can be justified as beating the system. I hope to God that we are not teaching young values this way."