Students Must Report Class Rank; Harvard to Disregard Blue Cards

The College has decided to give students full responsibility for sending their class ranks to local draft boards.

Undergraduates, who have previously filed a 109 form (request for a 2-S classification) or file one before the end of the year, will be sent their class rank for this year by July 8. With this information they will be able to complete the new 109 form which require's student's class rank to be included.

Dean Monro explained last night that this system is designed to give students "maximum control over and responsibility for" information sent to local draft boards.

This system resembles the procedure used for sending transcripts to draft boards. When a local draft board makes such a request, the deans office gets permission from the student to prepare a transcript and then gives it to the student to send.

The blue permission cards, which were distributed during spring registration, are now void Monro said. "They were a clumsy effort," he continued, "to handle a situation that did not develop." A new system, he explained, will have to be found for next year.

Top Four Grades

The class rank sent to the student will be computed only from this year's grades. It will be determined by assigning numerical value to the students top four grades (12 for an A, 11 for an A-, etc). The total will be divided by four to receive the rank quotient.

Draft boards are concerned with what third or quarter of the class the student falls into. The rank quotient will be used to determine this figure.

Robert H. Shenton, registrar of the College, said that the rank, will be sent to the student under his official signature. This hopefully will prevent students from tampering with the rank before it is sent to a local draft board.

It will be possible, Shenton said, for a student to request the University to send his class rank straight to his local draft board, and just send him a copy. The rank will have to be sent to the local draft board within 30 days after the close of the Spring term (June 16).