Time to Decide

THE only thing certain about the current draft conundrum is who must resolve it. Members of the House Armed Services Committee have told Harvard officials that Congress has "tossed the ball" to the President. The President must come to a decision.

Last spring all Johnson had to do was submit a model random-selection plan to a conference committee in order to have a chance of getting it written into law. His silence was unexplainable. Now, Johnson has chosen to remain silent because he is reluctant to choose among politically unattractive alternatives.

Within the framework of the 1967 Military Selective Service Act, the President may direct draft boards to draft first the oldest men under 26, or 19-year-olds, or a certain mixture of the two. Every scheme yet devised by the Defense Department to determine the mix is unfair to someone. Johnson is said to be leaning toward a plan under which the monthly mix would be determined by the proportion of men of each age in the eligible pool; thus if half the men in the pool are 21, half of each month's call-up would be 21-year-olds.

The President must also decide about graduate school deferments. The Interagency Advisory Committee recommended to him a wide list of fields to be deferred. Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz is against such deferments.

While the President hesitates, it is not only the students but also the graduate schools who are lost. As President Pusey pointed out at a recent press conference with the Crimson, it is difficult for a graduate school to prepare a budget or determine admissions' policies when it does not know whether it will have any men next year.

It is bad enough that students are being drafted to fight in Vietnam, but it is even more deplorable that students who may be less than six months away from bivouac are not allowed to know whether or not they will be conscripted. Johnson has proven that he can keep his secret, even as hundreds of reporters and university officials try to wring it out of him. The time has come for a decision.