Now What?

President Conant's report to the Board of Overseers is a sound and stimulating survey of the University in its first year of war. But undergraduates are still primarily interested in their own fate, not in the University's, and they will hunt through the report in vain for remarks affecting their immediate plans. But neither President Conant nor University Hall can or should make recommendations before the facts are all before them. Those facts have not yet come through.

Meanwhile students must plan for the coming term, and there is some basis for planning. The departure of the ERC was originally scheduled to start with the retraining program on the first of February. But things are moving slowly in Washington; the scant information available indicates that manpower leaders are still debating what procedure should be used in choosing the colleges for the retraining program. It is certain that no colleges have yet been picked, that neither the Army nor the Navy has drawn up any contracts, and that neither has yet started to choose men to be sent back. This will probably postpone all retraining schemes for at least three months, and it is entirely possible that it will be June or July before the first group of khaki collegians see the green of a campus.

Now that retraining has been shoved ahead, the ERC may be left in college in order to prevent a let-down in the use of college facilities. All rumors of universities where students have received their orders continue to break down upon investigation, and one can only be sure that any student who prematurely severs his connections here will be called, while the undergraduate returning after his exams might find that he has secured his sheepskin before he was fitted to a uniform. He might also find himself in training by the third week of February, but if the ERC is to go that soon, undergraduates will receive orders in ample time to break all university commitments without penalty.

It's anybody's guess, and unfortunately the University is in no position to help. This much is certain, though: unless things are being considerably speeded in Washington, it will be physically impossible to call all Reserve Corps members before March, and anyone leaving college now may find himself staring wistfully at the degree he might have obtained.