Teach-In Panelists Decry Registration

Saying that registration would lead to a draft like "night following day," anti-draft counselor John Judge last night urged students to decide on "covert or overt non-registration" should Congress adopt President Carter's registration proposal.

"It's a lonely, personal decision, and you have to face the fact that you may end up in jail," Judge told 150 students who gathered in the Science Center for an antidraft teach-in last night.

Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of History of Science, and two other speakers also discussed Carter's call for a renewal of draft registration before students gathered for a series of small workshops.

Mendelsohn said aggressive American foreign policy over the last few months may have made it easier for the Russians to decide to invade Afghanistan. "As far as they were concerned, detente was dead by Christmas," he said.

Mendelsohn said increased weapons programs and the slow death of the SALT II arms limitation treaty may have convinced the Soviets that the era of cooperation "which peaked in June with the beginning of the SALT II treaty" was over.

"The administration began to reject parity, and the call for military superiority over Russia had taken hold," he said.

"A draft represents an internal stiffening in this country," Mendelsohn said. "It is part of the increasing militarization of the American mind," he added.

Stressing that a conventional war in the Middle East could quickly escalate into nuclear conflict, Mendelsohn said, "I for one reject the arrogance of the potential call for the destruction of the world as we know it for temporal political or military ends."

Judge said the military establishment was "spreading lies" about the need for a draft.

"The draft was traditionally a way to channel people," Judge said. "It put them in an uncomfortably warm room with a set of preselected doors; except during the sixties, people started punching out the windows."

"This movement is the biggest resistance in history to conscription," Judge said. "In the sixties, we legitimized the right to say "No," he added.