ROTC Change Shelves Short Service Plan

All Army ROTC graduates will have to serve their full two years of active duty if the latest Defense Department proposal is accepted, this week's Army, Navy, Air Force Journal reveals.

This would, in effect, shelve an Army plan to have two-thirds of its ROTC graduates serve only 90 days on active duty and then go into the reserve. The other third was to serve the regular hitch.

According to the semi-official publication, the Defense Department is expected to modify its budget currently before the House Appropriations Committee, in order to avert the threatened force-out of about 5,000 Army Reserve officers.

In the present budget, there would not be room for all of the 16,000 Army ROTC graduates as two-year officers. The publication, however, says that the extra money needed to prevent a force-out will be provided for in a revised budget.

The Army faces a slash of 21,538 officers under the present budget. To keep the number of force-outs to a minimum, the Army considered the 90-day plan. If the Appropriations Committee allows the Defense Department to modify the budget, ROTC graduates will be carried as "extra numbers."

Selective Service officials were hesitant to endorse the Army's plan by which men deferred from service under ROTC would only have to serve 90 days on active duty.