Columbia and the Ranks

Columbia's trustees last week ordered its undergraduate schools to stop computing students' rank in class. Three months before, the Columbia College faculty asked that class standings be withheld from draft boards; a week before, the University Council, a joint body of administrators and faculty members, agreed.

The professors who fought for the proposal made no secret of their intentions. They did not like the possibility of having the grades they handed out used at some future date to help determine a student's military status. They felt it would distort the purpose and importance of grades. They rightly found the Selective Service's attempts to tell "good" students from "bad" distasteful and were suspicious of the entire deferment system.

The trustees transformed their slap at the Selective Service into a broad change in educational policy. The trustees' statement, which avoided mention of the Selective Service, explained vaguely that they had tried to prevent an "intrusion by the university...into the political arena" or, at least, something that would be "regarded" as an intrusion. Their move, however, accomplished what the Faculty wanted: draft boards no longer can obtain class ranks from Columbia students.

Because the trustees did the right deed, it is doubly unfortunate that the reasons they gave were wrong. By skirting the draft issue they avoided an increasingly troublesome problem on which Columbia was making some headway--how a university faculty should handle educational policies that have vital political implications.

This issue absorbed most of the Harvard Faculty's debate on the draft and eventually killed it. John Rawls' first resolution, condemning the 2-S deferment, was tabled ndefinitely because it seemed too "political." Later, in a fuller discussion, a second resolution of Rawls' was also abled. It became clear that many Faculty members simply feared that an attack on 2-S would be labeled "political" and would be seen as a Harvard protest against American policy in Vietnam.

But that was not, as Rawls tried to argue, sufficient reason to back away from an educational controversy in which university faculties have a key role. The Selective Service's provision for student deferments--and for basing deferments on class rank and aptitude test scores--is too important for universities to table or ignore.

Professors who want to see 2-S abolished but argued that the Faculty as a whole should take no stand on the matter can now, of course, point to the fact that the President and Congress are seriously considering ending student deferments without any prompting from the universities. But it is impossible to predict how the debate will go, and Harvard has lost its chance to add its voice. Columbia has not.

Columbia's resolution was not as direct as those the Harvard Faculty discussed. It was limited to class ranks and did not directly consider the question of student deferments as a whole--and that was unfortunate. The trustees' evasions were even more unfortunate. But at least they acted.