Conference on Draft Blasts Ranks and 2-S

Huge B-52's from the Wright Field SAC base in Ohio used to make practice bomb runs over one of the dormitories of near-by Antioch College. Plane after plane came roaring over the target dormitory, opened their empty bomb bays, and disappeared over the trees.

Annoyed Antiochians climbed up on the roof of the dormitory and with strips of linen spelled out in six-foot letters a message for the bombardiers to zero in on: "SCREW SAC."

The message (not to mention the bombing runs) probably accurately portrayed the level of communication that has long existed between Antioch and the local military authorities. Thus it seemed only natural that when the National Collegiate Conference on the Draft met at Antioch two weeks ago, it should assume a defiant stance against the military establishment.

The delegates called for an end to involuntary conscription and denounced the large standing army and huge defense budget as a cause of the Vietnamese war.

It is difficult to attach any clear significance to the myriad of resolutions which the conference adopted. The delegates did not represent a fair cross section of college students, teachers, and administrators. But it would be equally unfair to dismiss the conference as a bunch of leftists suggesting predictable reforms. Many of the students who came were presidents of their college councils, not simply disgruntled SDS types.

At the very least the conference proved that there is a good deal of concern about the morality of the draft. It also dramatized a split between students and faculty over two issues: deferring students and basing deferments on class rank. In the end the students, ignoring cautions from the faculty, called for the total abolition of ranking and -- more surprising -- of the student deferment.

Students and administrators from Antioch had billed the conference as an examination of the influence of Selective Service on colleges today. A list of possible modifications, voted by the delegates, was to be submitted to the Presidential commission now studying Selective Service reform.

Undoubtedly most people who feel the present draft system is pretty good did not bother to make the long trek out to Ohio for a conference based on the premise that it needs reform. Almost everyone, who did come was concerned with the ethics of the draft; they obviously constituted a more radical segment of the intellectual community than those who stayed at home. And while invitations were mailed out to hundreds of universities and military colleges across the country, only about 40 colleges were represented.

When this slightly left-of-center group arrived, there was no concensus as to what should be reformed or where the debate should begin. At first the delegates grappled with the philosophy behind involuntary conscription, but finding the discussion too amorphous, they moved on to an examination of the conscription mechanism--ranking, 2-S, and the deferment of conscientious objectors. Here the delegates were on their own turf, debating policies with direct impact on their personal lives -- the draft and its relation to the education industry.

They agreed that ranking is intended to make the 2-S deferment less inequitable. But ranking's main effect on the colleges, they argued, has been to turn teachers into Selective Service representatives. "We have to do their dirty work," snapped one outraged professor.

The delegates objected to ranking because:

* grading standards vary among teachers, departments, and universities;

* averages often have to be calculated all the way to the third or fourth decimal place;

* ranking intensifies competition for good grades at a time when many colleges are in fact realizing that rigid grading may distort the learning process; and

* students who must hold part-time jobs to keep themselves in school have less time to spend on their studies and thus are automatically at a disadvantage.

As one faculty member at the conference said, "I feel reluctant to give a student a C minus on a Keats exam when I know that it may ultimately decide whether he goes to Vietnam."

Any discussion of ranking must inevitably concern itself with the larger question of student deferments. One SDS student described the relationship this way: "Ranking is the mutant off-spring of a deformed parent -- 2-S." A majority of the delegates at the conference agreed.

Some delegates argued that it was redundant to call for the abolition of ranking and 2-S, but others said that it was important to discredit each for educational and moral reasons.

One student described 2-S as a "class-conscious deferment which protects only those who are rich or fortunate enough to stay in school until they are no longer draftable." A number of professors at the conference complained that the student deferment had placed a "false value" on formal education by allowing students to avoid the draft and "hide in the endless catacombs of education."

Both teachers and administrators agreed that there are more students in school today who are not interested in getting an education than ever before. If it were not for the draft, they said, many would have taken jobs instead of enrolling, or they would drop out of college for a year or two before graduating.

But perhaps the strongest arguments put forth against the 2-S deferment rested on the same premise as the Selective Service rationale for deferring students. Washington defends the student deferment on the grounds that, in the long run, it is in the nation's interest to protect its human resources. An educated student who has already cost thousands of dollars to train is obviously more valuable and of greater potential to the state than a high-school drop-out. The college student will almost always make a larger contribution to the Gross National Product than someone who does not achieve the same level of education.

One has only to remember the crippling effect of the First and Second World Wars on England, which lost a whole generation of technically and artistically skilled young men, to appreciate the basis of this position.

But it is also apparent that those students who go on to college and graduate school tend to be from the higher socio-economic strata of society -- from those families which have the greatest political and economic power.

Two separate arguments against the 2-S emerged from this analysis. First, there would be stronger opposition to the war from the power elite if their college-age children were vulnerable to the draft. Second, the government would be more hesitant about taking military actions if they endangered the lives of the young men who were the scientists and technicians of tomorrow. As it is now, the high school drop-out who is not protected by the 2-S (and who is unlikely to have powerful parents) is expendable.

In the final plenary vote, the students, allied with a small group of faculty members, opposed the administrators and the vast majority of professors. The older generation argued that the 2-S protected the vulnerable intellectual elite and that however inequitable the system appears, it is of the utmost importance to protect future intellectuals.

The students, perhaps out of a sense of guilt for having themselves been protected, were willing to abolish their own deferment because of its class bias, and because they felt that such a move might, as one student put it, "tame the military monster." The student-faculty alliance prevailed, in a large measure through perseverance -- a number of administrators and faculty members tired sooner and went back to their classrooms before the final vote.

The resolutions which were drafted in the last hours of the plenary session were an attempt to reconcile two factions: those who wanted a simple condemnation of forced conscription, and others who were willing to condemn the involuntary system, but wanted to include concrete reforms -- in the likely event that Congress didn't accept the idea of voluntary service.

In the end no one was pleased, but almost everyone was appeased. The idealists -- who argued that to talk of reforms after discrediting the premises of the draft system diluted the impact of the denunciation -- were thrown a sop. The final resolution declared that the conference was primarily against an involuntary system.

The realists -- who argued for concrete reforms -- were more satisfied. The resolution included their proposals for the abolition of ranking and the student deferment, and their suggestion that a lottery system be used whenever Congress declares a war.

But a tiny third group, including two delegates from Yale University and a representative of Lawrence College, dissociated themselves from the conference. Lannie Davis, a Yale representative and an editor of the Daily News, complained that the conference had "exceeded its mandate" by questioning the philosophy behind a strong military instead of restricting itself to specified draft reforms. Davis had been a member of the conference planning committee.

The conference demonstrated the difficulty of eliciting a coherent policy on the draft from members of the college community. What emerged was a sense of discontent with the system, especially with those elements that effect colleges most directly -- ranking and the 2-S -- but little idea as to what kind of system the educators and educated would find practical and unobjectionable