Service Needs Might Compel College Draft

College students are bound to feel the pinch as authorities generally stiffen draft regulations to milk more and more men from deferred ranks into the military, a high draft official told the CRIMSON yesterday.

Prime target of the selective service will be those men who first claimed deferment as students and later married and claimed deferment for dependents, he said.

"If we're going to produce the necessary men, we will have to tighten deferments all down the line." He quickly added that possible policy changes are still in the planning stage, and can only be effected by a Presidential Executive Order.

Future Grad Students Threatened

Earlier this week, Lewis B. Hershey, Director of Selective Service, threw a scare into students planning to go to graduate school in the near future. He said, in effect, that there would be more emphasis on drafting men as soon as they finished college.

Hershey also said the nation must decide whether fatherhood can be considered a substitute for military service. One and a half million men, the largest single block of deferred, have been excused from service because of dependents. The time has come, Hershey stated, when fathers, otherwise eligible, should be drafted.

According to the Washington source, besides drafting fathers, standards will be upped for both minimum class standing and college deferment test scores.

If selective service starts taking fathers, "It will be hard to recommend deferment for so many students," he said.

Meanwhile, a row is fast developing in the nation's capital over raising active service from 24 months to 36 months. Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, has gone on record against the proposed change.

Hershey, too, has noted his disapproval, saying "Until we have taken every man who has not yet served, it would not be a good thing to extend the period of service for those who are called."