The Draft: The Lame, The Halt, The Blind & The Female

THE DRAFT The Lame, the Halt, THe Blind & the Female A long-standing criticism of the Selective Service System is that it unduly favors the college student, who can almost always escape military service if he stays in school long enough—and thereafter is usually qualified to enter a draft-proof profession. In response to such complaints, Congress last June knocked out deferments for nearly all graduate students, excepting only those going into medicine, dentistry and related fields, as well as the ministry.

It was a Draconian step, with profound, probably unforeseen, implications for the nation’s educational system; many academic leaders expected the Johnson Administration to soften it. Last week, however, the Administration not only reaffirmed the no-deferment rule for graduate students (those already in their second year or beyond would not be affected), but also wiped out automatic occupational exemptions for some 340,000 professional men in such areas as teaching and various technical services.

The Intellect Gap. Graduate-school enrollment is expected to dip 25% to 50% or more, confronting some smaller schools with the very real threat of financial ruin. Most universities, depending heavily on graduate students to teach lower-level undergraduate courses, will have a hard time finding enough qualified people to stand behind their lecterns. More important, as many thousands of the nation’s brightest young men enter the Army rather than graduate school, there will be a gap of at least two years in the development of much-needed skills and intellect. The new regulations, said Harvard President

Nathan Pusey, would leave only “the lame, the halt, the blind and the female” in next fall’s first-year classes.

While admitting that the old scheme was indeed unfair, Pusey and most other educators wanted some form of lottery that would take a proportion of graduate students but leave the majority unscathed. Since no one would be guaranteed safety, went the argument, such a system would be fair to non-college men, but at the same time cause minimal disruption of the educational system. The Administration contended that such a lottery would be too difficult to administer.

Since the draft takes the older men first, its effects on those in the undergraduate class of ’68, who have already had four years of deferment, will be felt almost as soon as they take off their caps and gowns in June. More than 150,000 of this spring’s class and men now in their first year of graduate school will be drafted after July 1—just as draft calls are rising to replace men inducted during the Viet Nam buildup—while perhaps another 75,000 will volunteer so that they can pick their own service.

4,000 Rules. The vast majority of the post-July draftees will thus be college graduates (v. 4% last year) and a year or two older than men taken today. There is every likelihood that draft demonstrations will increase in size and stridency, when many of those most opposed to the war face imminent induction. There is also some likelihood that Army morale will suffer, as thousands of men who question the war are sent to fight it.

The effects of the decision to abolish occupational deferments are not so certain. Since local draft boards will still have wide discretion in granting job exemptions on the basis of community and defense needs, most of the men presently deferred may still escape service. They will not have automatic deferral, however, and instead of one standard rule from Washington, noted Senator Edward Kennedy, there will now be 4,000 rules laid down by the 4,000 different local boards. There is, however, one certainty as a result of last week’s edict. Hundreds of thousands of men and their families—hitherto affected in only small ways—will soon feel the full dimensions of the war in Viet Nam.