Harvard Peace Corps Sign-Ups Drop 20%

The Peace Corps reported this week that its recruiting drive at Harvard has produced about 20 per cent fewer applicants than did last year's drive. A total of 97 seniors and juniors took the Peace Corps Placement Test and submitted Volunteer Questionnaires during the Corps' one-week visit to Phillips Brooks House, while 125 did the last year.

While Corps officials view the substantial drop with only mild concern, some observers here fear that the Peace Corps' early success at Harvard and Radcliffe may have been only a meeting phenomenon.

According to William Delano, who all the drive, the decrease in volunteers hay be attributed to a substantial degree of self-selection. "The people who signed up this year seemed really serious about it," he remarked at the conclusion of his visit.

Delano pointed to the fact that the relationship between the sign-ups" and the "show-ups" is extraordinarily good at Harvard. At many colleges, he explained, much of the recruiters' time wasted on talking to people who are not sincerely interested in serving.

"You don't have to wax eloquent or be a rah-rah" to recruit at Harvard (and a few other schools, including Yale, Berkeley, and Stanford), Delano insisted. "A greater degree of self-awareness" accounts for an acceptance average at these schools which is about twice as high as that of the nation as a whole, he said.

Delano estimated that over 70 percent of Harvard applicants to the Peace Corps will be accepted. Last year 125 members of the graduating class actually entered the Corps, but this was not the exact group which signed during recruiting. The success of last year's drive "astounded" Delano.

Many students feel that the smaller number of Peace Corps recruits is not due to "self-selection" but to the fact that "the novelty of the idea has worn-off."

For the most part, Delano was given a polite reception when he spoke in classes. But in at least one instance, an anthropology class, "just where you'd expect the best reception," every-one was rather cynical, according to another senior.

The drop in Peace Corps recruiting may well be due to the fact that students agree with Delano that "some-time in your life you must be a volunteer, or you will regret it." But the competition for volunteer time is increasing, and one Cliffie commented that she would not choose the Peace Corps as she once might have done, "because I'd rather work in Mississippi and solve my own country's problems."