volume Ixv, number 70 university of southern California daily trojan los angeles, California monday, february 12, 1973
Is the draft
by laurie anger
Due to the recent cancellation of the induction portion of the draft law, we will no longer maintain office hours. If you are unsure of your present draft status, feel free to contact any of the counselors listed below.
—USC Selective Service Counseling Center
In 1940 the involuntary induction clause of the draft law was put into effect to draft men into the armed services to fight in World War II.
Since that time, until the present, there was only one six month period in 1947 when that clause was dropped and this country relied on an all-volunteer army.
Recently President Nixon ordered a halt to involuntary induction.
While for many this order came as a blessing it has caused confusion and concern for others over their present draft status.
Although no one is being drafted or inducted per se, the only part of the draft law that was discontinued was the induction clause, and the selective service system will go on as before.
Men between the ages of 18 and 26 must still register, they will still be classified, and they may still be called in for physicals. The only difference is that for now they won’t be drafted.
Court cases challenging induction before the recent change will still continue because they are concerned with criminal offenses (one commits a felony when one refuses induction). Most cases deal with the question of proper or improper induction procedures. The only relief is that those challenging the selective service system in court know that if they lose they won’t be drafted afterwards.
Sam Rees, a USC law student who has been active with the USC Selective Service Counseling Center for three years,said the center is winding down its program here and plans to turn its office space back over to the Student Union.
Although it will still provide phone numbers where counselors can be reached for anyone with questions, the need for an office is gone.
Rees said that although no one is being inducted now the involuntary induction clause of the draft law is still in effect and will not come up for review before Congress until June. Therefore, if President Nixon decides to put the law back into effect, the people who are still being processed could be inducted almost immediately.
Earlier this year, before the number of inductions began decreasing, Rees said that the center was counseling about 40 people per
really over?
week. Last year, when the selective service was calling higher lottery numbers, Rees was counseling approximately 10 people an hour either by phone or by appointment.
“For those people being inducted the problem was every bit as real as before inductions started winding down,” he said. “These people are trying to cope with a problem by either working within the system or by trying to avoid a system which they don’t believe in.”
Everyone has their own favorite story about someone’s attempt to get out of the draft.
One rather bizarre case concerned a man who, reporting for his physical, was called in to see the psychiatrist. Dressed in a long white kimono, he ran into the office screaming, “Kill, Kill, Kill!” at the top of his lungs.
Two friends carrying plastic catsup bottles filled with watered down catsup proceded to squirt it at everything.
While the three ran around his office like maniacs, the psychiatrist just looked on and later decided that this draftee wouldn’t be fit for service.
But for every person who was able to get out—either by imaginative schemes or by the use of a lawyer, ususally effective in the later years of the Vietnam war—there were many more whose schemes didn’t work or who didn’t have enough money to hire a lawyer.
Free draft counseling became a necessity and the counselors had to find ways to help with the many different needs and problems of each individual.
“The heartbreakers were the ones that came at the last minute,” said Rees. By then it was usually too late to help them.
He added that it was best to counsel an individual before age 18 and work out an effective plan to protect his rights and desires through his eight years of eligibility.
And the moral question of the war wasn’t always the issue involved in draft counseling or in someone’s approach to his possible induction. For many it was just a hassle and a roadblock that had to be overcome. While many chose more conventional means to bypass it, such as student deferments, others out of necessity thought up more absurd methods or left for Canada.
But, at leas* Tor the moment, they will have to channel their creative efforts elsewhere.