Mom Says Military Consent Forms Showed up in Her High School Sons' Backpacks

We may not all agree on who should lead the U.S. or the new laws being passed, but one thing we can all agree on is that a lot of what’s happening in the world just doesn’t make sense. Honestly, how many times this past week have you read a headline and muttered, “This makes no sense!”? Admit it.

Ms. Allenby (@ms.allenby) did, taking to TikTok to share the deeply disturbing form that was sent home with her 14-year-old twin boys during their first week of high school.

Tucked into the usual stack of papers sent home at the start of the year, a form stood out because it wasn’t asking about enrolling in a reduced lunch program or for emergency contact info. Nope. It requested consent to share her children’s information with the U.S. military, citing a “new law.” Wait, like for a draft? Let’s get into her disturbing video that has been shared over 85,000 times.

So, Ms. Allenby says that during the first week of school, she received a form sent home for students at Greenfield Public School in Greenfield, Mass. Her husband started going through the stack and flagged one form because it mentioned a “new law” and “military recruiters” in the same sentence. After reading it, Ms. Allenby felt compelled to share it on TikTok to inform other parents about what’s being sent home with kids that requires a signature.

The form starts off with, “A new law has been passed that all school districts must release to military recruiters the name, address, and telephone number of juniors and seniors.” The law, which isn’t officially named on the form, also requires schools to notify parents to complete the form, “indicating whether they grant permission for this information to be released to the military.”

Here’s where it gets confusing. The form continues, “The notification advises that, in the event they fail to complete and return this form to the school, all requests for this information by the military will be honored.”

It not only includes a return-by date, but also states that it should only be completed if you want to opt out. What confused Ms. Allenby, and many others, is that most forms are usually opt-in, not opt-out. So, it’s unclear whether the confusion was intentional, perhaps hoping parents would overlook or misunderstand it, or accidental.

Either way, Ms. Allenby was bothered by it and questioned why her sons’ information was needed in the first place. She not only worried they might want the info for a “draft list” for a potential war, but she also joked that maybe they wanted their names and information so they could have them “pick up cigarette butts in D.C.”

What’s more, she even wagered her life savings, saying she bet that private and boarding schools didn’t receive the form, only public schools, a point many commenters on TikTok agreed with. Some even suggested the form might be connected to Project 2025.

While there’s still a lot of uncertainty around the plan, fact checks from USA Today and Snopes confirm that there’s nothing in Project 2025 that reinstates the draft, which was ended in 1974, and that public school seniors are not required to serve in the armed forces.

That said, the form itself is fishy. Before spreading any misinformation, the best takeaway is to always read every form that comes home in your child’s backpack.