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thedrifter
07-12-07, 07:55 PM
Inked Marines could be DIs, Conway says
By Kimberly Johnson - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Jul 12, 2007 18:08:12 EDT

Marines who were previously barred from drill instructor duty because they had tattoos visible on their lower arms might now have the chance for it, even after the inception of the Corps’s new stringent tattoo policy, the top Marine Corps officer said Wednesday.

The Marine Corps banned leathernecks with ink on their lower arms for fear that young recruits would follow their example. Earlier this year, the Corps took the ban even further by forbidding all Marines from getting tattoos on lower arms and legs. However, Marines who had ink jobs on their lower arms before the policy went into place were grandfathered in if they documented their ink with their units.

Commandant Gen. James Conway told Marines and their families during a town hall meeting Wednesday at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz., that “[T]here is no blowback on them at all if they had these tattoos before the policy was put out.”

“In fact, I said to [Marine Corps Manpower commander Lt. Gen. Ronald Coleman] why don’t we open up drill instructor duty to those people now because Marines can’t get those tattoos anymore anyway,” Conway said.

“If a Marine wants to go on special duty as a D.I. with a tattoo that’s fine,” he said. “We’re trying to be reasonable about our policy, and at the same time when we have Marines standing in formation, we’re as uniform as we can be.”

The Corps policy was a reaction to assignment issues emerging with Marines who have entire sleeves of tattoos from their elbows to their wrists, he said. “The problem with those kind of tattoos is that a Marine is not assignable worldwide. There’s a lot of things we can’t do with a Marine if he opts to do that,” Conway said.

Conway said the Corps has not yet settled on the exact definition of what an excessive tattoo is. “I’m still waiting on Manpower to give me a set of pictures that says, ‘This is a picture of a tattoo we consider excessive,’ ” he said.

There is room for interpretation, Conway acknowledged. “There’s a kid who works out in the same place I do who’s got ‘Semper’ on one arm and ‘Fidelis’ on the other. You can see it if you walk behind him, but you can’t see it from the front. That, to me, is OK. That’s not a sleeve. He’s got a tattoo that is fairly apparent, but it’s not excessive and I think we could get him to some of these other duties,” Conway said.

“There are some people who think I don’t like tattoos,” Conway said. “That’s really not true. I don’t have any tattoos, but nor am I against necessarily a reasonable tattoo.”

Ellie