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The reaction to today's draft is also different from any previous one because of the nature of the war in Viet Nam. No martial spirit is evident; there is no easily visible enemy. The most extreme—and untypical—example of opposition to the draft is the Vietnik, who burns his draft card, defies the courts and generally makes a nuisance of himself. But even the average draftee who does not oppose the war in Viet Nam does not completely understand it, and is moved by no strong motivation to join it. "If students, for example, could feel the peril, more of them would be willing to go," says Dr. Edmond Hallberg, dean of students at California State College at Los Angeles. "Today they are more interested in the future of man, in the abstract, than in the national interest."
In an all-out war, when practically everyone serves, practically no one has cause to complain of inequity. A large part of the present reaction to the draft is that Viet Nam is a limited war that has not yet demanded the full strength of the U.S., and therefore requires only a certain number of the nation's eligible men. Today's draftee may feel not only the normal dismay at going into the service but resentment at having been singled out while others in roughly similar situations escape. With better reason than usual, he may ask; Why me? "The way things are now," said one Manhattan inductee, "half go and half luck out."
Many of the complaints come from those who have been particularly fortunate in lucking out: college students. The nation's campuses have long proved a sanctuary from the draft, which allows students in good standing a 2-S deferment. Now that sanctuary is threatened. Many draft boards, rushing to fill their larger quotas, have run through the available supply of eligible, nondeferred single men and practically exhausted the store of married men without children. The result is that the college manpower pool must be tapped. Already many boards, particularly in California where junior colleges flourish, have begun reclassifying college students.
As of last week, college students in general will no longer be automatically deferable; they will be called when necessary to fulfill draft quotas. To decide which students to take, Lieut. General Lewis B. Hershey, 72, the onetime Indiana farm boy who has run the draft for 25 years, has reinstituted the qualification test used during the Korean War. Hershey believes that only the best students should be spared, will demand either a good score on the 100-question College Qualification Test or a reasonably high rank in class to ensure a student of deferment. The new rules, while not necessarily making the draft more democratic, at least force students to work harder to maintain their deferments.
The Impossibility of Fairness