100 Business Students Miss Air Commissions

New indications of sweeping cuts in Air Force reserve commission opportunities for students appeared yesterday when 100 graduating Business School men learned that their applications for direct appointments had been turned down.

At the same time it was learned that plans to give graduating law students direct Air Force commissions as legal assistants in the Air Material Command will probably be scuttled.

These decisions which follow closely on the recently announced slashes in AFROTC quotas, are unofficially attributed to the proposed one-third cut in the Air Force budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Will Not Affect College

Aside from the already announced cuts in opportunities for non-flight cadets, the proposed appropriation drop is not likely to effect the College AFROTC, Colonel Frank P. Bostrom declared yesterday. "The AFROTC is not a very expensive part of the Air Force," Bostrom said.

Announcement of the refusal of the business student commissions was made yesterday at a meeting at the school after the news was received from Air Force officials.

The students were applying for commissions offered by the Air Force to men with masters degrees in business administration from throughout the nation. Students at many other business schools also applied and have also apparently been turned down.

The commissions were to have been for 36 months of active duty scheduled to begin shortly after graduation. Most of them would have been specialist commissions in procurement, comptrollership, and personnel management.

No Law Decision Yet

Decision on the law student commissions has not definitely been made yet, but an official source yesterday said recent word from Washington indicates that budgetary cuts will make the planned appointments impossible.

These cuts were proposed last week by President Eisenhower when he asked for 5.2 billion dollars less in military appropriations that was requested in Truman's "lame-duck budget." Almost this entire cut is in the Air Force appropriations which are to be slashed from 16.7 billion to 11.7 billion.

This will mean the Air Force must reset its 1955-56 goal of 143 wings at 100 or perhaps lower.