The Draft: Reflections & Opinions
Bakan, David & Hoffman, Robert L.
The issue which has been raised by the students in asking that ranks should be withheld is one which is involved in a tangle with other issues. Among these are the issues of the rightness...
...Many teachers have sat in on committees in which applications to graduate and undergraduate programs have been reviewed...
...There is a growing general sentiment among educators that excessive significance being given to grades cheapens and degrades the values of a liberal education...
...Professors, who are profoundly aware of the limited reliability and validity of grades, will consider not only the merits of the student but his draft status in making a decision between a C-plus and a B-minus...
...Thus that which so deeply expresses our democratic beliefs, the University, is being drawn in to serve directly one of the least democratic agencies in our political life, the Selective Service Administration...
...The issue which has been raised by the students in asking that ranks should be withheld is one which is involved in a tangle with other issues...
...Has he really accomplished anything...
...Then there are still those of the university's students who want the Selective Service System to operate as intended...
...We, as experts, know that the evaluation of this kind of information has to be done very carefully...
...Suppose, then, the professor refuses to participate in the selection process, by not reporting grades to his registrar or by giving high grades to all male students...
...Being a member of a draft board is very much like being a captain of a life-boat that has too many people in it...
...Their educational decisions will be clouded by the moral agony that properly belongs to the draft boards...
...Let us hope that this is purely hypothetical...
...This is true...
...I consider such a deliberate exile the ultimate in social immorality...
...Seeley's basic belief here is that "we are all implicated in moral responsibility for what the state of which we are citizens does or doesn't do," no matter how remote we may be from morally significant acts of the state...
...A psychiatrist's records are, in some sense, the property of the patient...
...This tradition is based on the recognition of the value to society of really free educational institutions...
...Thus, the argument that the grades are the student's property, to be used in any way that he demands, cannot be defended...
...And it is our duty to make this clear in every way that we can to those who determine Selective Service policy...
...Yet I think that further reflection must lead to conclusions different from his about what the professor should do...
...It is an agency which least expresses our democratic beliefs...
...It will be argued that at least the professor has gained a modest moral advantage by refusing to let his participation be a voluntary one...
...In recent days the terms "coercion" and "freedom" have been rather freely used...
...One argument which has been made is that since whatever subversion of the educational enterprise that may be done is already done when transcripts are required by draft boards, there is little additional damage to be done by giving rank in class...
...To do so is only for the purposes of the Selective Service Administration...
...The current actions by the Selective Service Admin istration have only served to exacerbate the emphasis on grades...
...It is worth recalling that the very act by Congress which created student deferments was informed by the sense of the value of the educational enterprise to the national welfare...
...What if the Selective Service Administration should ask for attendance records...
...The attempt is most unlikely to succeed, but what if it did...
...but isn't this outweighed by the negative effects of his action...
...Internal exile" will do, if you can avoid paying taxes, obeying laws and all that...
...If some students are saved from the draft, then young men elsewhere will be drafted in their place...
...Thus, whatever he does, the professor in reality contributes to the selection of men for the field of slaughter...
...But n young men are to be drafted in any case...
...We believe that the student should be free to take advantage of opportunities...
...It is our duty as teachers to teach them as well...
...A student who does not grant this permission is immediately subject to being regarded as a "draft delinquent," uncooperative with his draft board...
...Thus, in trying to gain the personal solace of making his participation in draftee selection involuntary, the professor causes for his students serious negative effects which have nothing to do with the draft and war...
...I think that we ought to do all that we can to persuade the authorities not to ask for transcripts...
...I think this too high a price for our personal solace...
...One can and must do whatever one can to make the society less immoral and remain in the society to do this, however difficult the task...
...The argument is made that we cannot legally withhold transcripts...
...But there is a growing abuse over the nation of students registering at colleges in order to maintain a student deferment, and not going to classes, and showing up at examination time...
...If he makes these attempts at withdrawal from collective moral responsibility, then he must make another and another, gathering only little scraps of solace at great cost in antisocial "side-effects...
...At the moment the colleges and universities of this country are being drawn into becoming agents of a government agency...
...If Professor Seeley wants to argue that professors should refuse to report grades as part of an attack on student deferments, claiming that exempting students from the slaughter is immoral, I might be more inclined to agree...
...The ex-professor, if he is to refuse payment, must find employment where taxes are not withheld from his salary...
...or, that on the student's request they should be given to anyone that he requests that they be given...
...The morally agonized student will be less motivated to do well on examinations knowing that his good grade will depress someone else's grade...
...Moreover, unfortunately the grading system is not, as Seeley says it is, primarily a means of evaluating the student for his own information...
...Students who might want to disagree with a professor's interpretation of what Socrates might have meant will refrain from doing so because of fear of alienating that professor...
...Unless we can effectively remove the coercive presence of the Selective Service System from our relations with our students, all of the liberal values which we are interested in defending will be undermined in the University itself...
...With each withdrawal he must recognize other points from which he must pull back...
...The Selective Service System is hardly to be considered integral to our total democratic so ciety...
...The following question has not yet arisen, but we should be prepared for it...
...I think that it should not...
...If the professor has saved some, then others will be drafted who would not have been, had he reported the lower grades...
...If we defer to the Selective Service Administration in giving rank in class, would we not also find ourselves in an awkward position when another extraordinary practice is asked of us...
...Conscientious members of draft boards—and we can presume that most of them are—have the burden of mak ing decisions in the face of intrinsically unresolvable dilemmas...
...The fact is that there is no valid educational reason for ranking male students...
...they have been wantonly denied...
...the university has seemingly dissociated itself from the conscription system without really doing so...
...By issuing student grades which draft boards then use, professors become part of the process of selecting young men to kill and be killed in Vietnam...
...I assume most DISSENT readers will agree with him...
...It is a basis for others to make decisions with respect to the student—not only draft deferment, but also scholarships, degree awarding, employment, graduate school admission, and so on ad nauseam...
...The use of a lottery combined with a national service requirement is a viable alternative which, at the very least, would remove the gross deficiencies of the present system...
...As someone has put it, if the student cannot understand a poem by Keats the chance of his being drafted is increased...
...But the fact remains that this particular use of the grade information is an extraordinary use...
...We may expect a growing trend toward shopping for easy courses, and a flocking to teachers who are reputed to be easy graders...
...And our argument, that it interferes with the educational enterprise, is far more telling than any argument to be made by any individual student...
...The only way to escape collective responsibility for immoral acts of the state is to exile yourself from the society altogether...
...If we give detailed grade information to the Selective Service Board at the request of the student, we are hardly allowing "freedom" to the student in any usual sense...
...At the moment they have been reaching for grades and rank in class as presumably "objective" criteria...
...He has, in the first place, interfered in the lives of other students who want the draft deferment system to work in the intended manner, possibly relying on the high grades he would have reported for them, but has not...
...The dean of students keeps many records on individual students, and yet one would not claim that all of the student's records must be opened on demand...
...Grades have certain customary and ordinary uses, as indeed, all professional records do...
...And there is a real quandary when hundreds of students demand that their records shall not be used for the construction of a ranking of males for the benefit of the Selective Service Administration...
...It is my deep conviction that we should resist this with all of the resources at our disposal...
...It is indeed true that coercion spawns coercion...
...Somebody has to go, and there are hardly any satisfactory criteria available to human beings to make decisions like this...
...And what we are feeling in the colleges and universities is exactly the result of our coercive role in international affairs...
...We certainly cannot expect members of draft boards to evaluate these records with even remotely similar qualification...
...Therefore, devote your energies to ending the war, abolishing the draft, or whatever you will, instead of attempting to gain absolution through dissociation...
...And if he pays none or only part of his taxes he is also refusing his social responsibility to support other, "good" government programs...
...But that is another debate...
...But we cannot expect a draft board member to know what the level of academic expectation is of a school from which he will be receiving rank-in-class information...
...and yet, the opinion of all men of good sense would be that they should not be freely opened to the patient...
...2. What Is the Responsibility of the Professor...
...As a result, the Selective Service Administration desires, hungers, even lusts for criteria which appear to them as "objective...
...The University should recognize that it is precisely the coercive presence of the Selective Service Administration in the University which should be barred...
...Some have thought that, with the reorganization of the College, something ought to be done whereby grades become less important...
...Nor is this just an ordinary government agency...
...When we evaluate a grade record it is often with some knowledge of the school from which the applicant comes...
...If this becomes really widespread, the Selective Service Administration might well move to ask also whether the student has been going to class conscientiously...
...But under any circumstances, the legal question of computing rank in class for men for the sake of the Selective Service Administration is of quite another order...
...On the other hand, if we refuse to give this information to the Selective Service Boards, at the very least the onus of "draft delinquency" is not upon the student...
...As one person has said, it would make as much educational sense to rank all lefthanded students...
...Among these are the issues of the rightness of student deferment altogether, the rightness of the war in Vietnam, and who is the "boss" among students, faculty and administration...
...To do so is also to exaggerate the student-tostudent competitiveness, which many regard as injurious to learning...
...Another course offers itself: professors— and students—can try to induce their university to refuse to report any grades to any draft board, an effort already made in many places...
...but this will be blocked by the necessity of providing detailed grade information to draft boards...
...Indeed, if I may depart for a moment to consider the war in Vietnam which has led to all of this, it is precisely our use of coercion in contrast with negotiation which many people in the United States have perceived as the major issue in Vietnam...
...Should the professor then withdraw from teaching altogether until there is no longer a chance of students being drafted...
...Even if grading were really reliable and valid for educational aims—the limits of which every teacher is painfully aware—it is certainly quite irrelevant to whether a student should or should not be a member of the Armed Forces...
...We have a historical tradition against taking attendance...
...The Selective Service System as we have it now is not exhaustive of all possibilities...
...It is a painful road and one that does not lead to purification...
...If his actions actually have a significant effect on the selection process, it is to help win deferment for students who would have been drafted had he reported the lower grades he would ordinarily have assigned to them...
...We are, rather, relinquishing him to the coercion which is an intrinsic feature of Selective Service...
...Recognizing that these issues are involved (the last one, in my opinion, not the most seemly for a great university such as the University of Chicago), I would like to deal principally with one: Should the University of Chicago compute rank in class and submit such information to draft boards even if the student gives his consent...
...Objections made above must be repeated...
...It is an undemocratic institution which we sadly tolerate for the sake of the larger good...
...When the Selective Service Administration coopts the educational enterprise in helping it to make its particular decisions on individual registrants it injures that which it is trying to protect...
...Robert L. Hoffman John R. Seeley's arguments about professors and the draft [DISSENT, May-June 1966] are compelling...
...Thereby the professor plays a role in the students' lives which is inappropriate in any case, and should be especially heinous if he objects to the present war or to conscription...
...All of us are fully aware of the qualifications that we bring to bear in reviewing grade information of any kind...
...If he does, what about the taxes he pays this government which drafts young men to fight in an immoral war...
...And it is indeed true that free discussion cannot take place in an atmosphere of coercion...
...Let me conclude by saying that there is a great tradition in the United States against government interference in education...
Vol. 13 • July 1966 • No. 4
