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"If I Died There." Indeed, the attitude toward the war among a broad cross section of collegians is both pessimistic and disappointed. To many of them, Viet Nam is by no means a battleground designed for noble death. Powerful (6 ft., 215 Ibs.) Paul ("the Whale") Faust, 22, captain of the University of Minnesota's 1965 football team (record: 5-4-1) last fall, recent winner of the Big Ten Conference Medal as the league's top senior athlete-scholar and a 25 soon to be 1A, gets thoughtful: "I don't know how I'd feel if I were fighting there; it's quite a thing to sacrifice yourself for something if you're not sure it's completely right."
Emory University's Cully Clark, 23, a graduate student who expects to get a 2A deferment as a teacher, is disturbed about his own status as well as the rationale behind the war. "I feel I could do more for my country as a teacher. But if I were deferred, how could I justify my position here when others are being sent there? I don't think I have the courage to be a pacifist. I will go if I'm called. But if I died there, I don't think I would have died for the right cause." U.C.L.A. Senior John Hickey, 22, who as a boy twice broke his neck in falls, figured he was certain to be 4F, but X rays at his pre-induction physical showed nothing serious enough to keep him out of the Army. This week he is scheduled to be inducted. "It's like cancer—you worry about it, but once you get it you have to live with it," he says. "Still, it's bad; I'm having dreams about shooting at Viet Cong with my machine gun and my friends going by on stretchers. But you have to serve your time, so it's either a hole in Oklahoma doing nothing for two years or over in Viet Nam where the action is."
Political Suicide. The specter of combat in Viet Nam leaves some sophisticated draftees spouting disclaimers. "You can't get excited about it unless you're extremely pro-war," says Harvard Senior Charles E. Ryberg, 21, who plans to enlist in Army intelligence. "I believe that Johnson has his head wedged; the war is political suicide. I would do my job, but it would be about the only thing in my life I haven't gone into with a missionary fervor."
Fervor or not, there is really nowhere else to turn—and most members of the Class of '66 recognize it with good grace. Witness Boston University Senior David Belyea, 22, who will soon turn 1A unless he finds an opening in the Coast Guard: "You try to dodge, up to a certain point. But when the responsibility gets up to a certain level, you can't walk around it. If I got to Viet Nam, I'd try to do the best I could. All these people are dodging responsibility right up to the end. Then they become resigned—they accept their responsibility, become patriotic, and they're in for two years."
For a few rare ones among the eligibles, the draft fouls up well-laid plans for a specific future. Richard S. Hollander, 21, a restaurant-management major at Michigan State University, wants nothing more than to begin his career—now. But he is 1A and cannot.