Brandeis Draft Discussions Produce Petitions, Ovations, More Meetings

Three separate meetings last night among Brandeis faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates - called to discuss whether professors should refuse to cooperate with the Selective Service System by not giving grades, produced two petitions and two decisions to meet again.

One of the central issues in each of the meetings was whether any such decision should stem from opposition to the war in Vietnam or from a concern for the integrity of the university.

The graduate students first voted 19-43 to approve a previously drafted resolution which called upon faculty and administration not to cooperate with the draft because "we believe that no American should be forced against his will to participate in the war in Vietnam."

But they later decided to make the resolution into a university-wide petition and to draft a more general petition, which based its opposition to cooperation with the draft on the belief that "the university must not be made a de facto agent of the Selective Service System."

Meanwhile, at an overflow undergraduate meeting, some 600 students agreed to take common action, but decided to meet next week to determine what that action wou'd be. After a two-hour open meeting, dominated by a whirring CBS television camera, the undergraduates shouted down a resolution which declared that using grades to determine eligibility for the draft was incompatible with "what the university is and represents." When news of the graduate students' anti-war petition was announced, the undergraduates broke into uproarious cheers.

John R. Seeley, chairman of the Sociology department, whose memo on grades and the draft precipitated the campus debate, said at a press conference after the meetings, "I don't believe the university can survive any more intrusion by the military."