Chaos and the Draft

College students have been looking toward (Washington for months now, hoping that Congress would give them a chance to get some sort of integrated education, but hoping even more that Congress would at least end the confusion and anarchy which marks the present rules on deferring students beyond the end of any particular year.

But now that the Senate and House conferees have met together to iron out the differences between the two houses on draft legislation, that second hope seems to have gone out the window. For the legislators have finally abandoned completely the responsibility they have been tossing back and forth during committee and floor debate. They have accepted a compromise that they hope will please everybody, but which in reality will solve nothing.

As the draft bill stands now, individual draft boards have the say as to which students will be drafted and which deferred. Class standing and scores on the special deferment test are to be taken into account, but are not to be binding on local decisions. This, the legislators reason, will keep non-students happy because they will know that the government is not making one group of men ineligible for the draft, and it will enable local boards to defer students on some sort of objective basis.

However, the injustices under the compromise plan are even more abhorrent than they would be under a plan of compulsory deferment for top students. Not only will there be discrimination between students and non-students, and good and bad students, but also between students of equal capacity on a geographical basis. It would almost seem that Congress was determined to bring chaos out of confusion in setting a new draft policy.