Word: laws
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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WASHINGTON, D.C.--The future of this year's college seniors and first-year graduate students is more uncertain at this moment than at any time since last June, when President Johnson signed the 1967 Military Selective Service Act into law. Less than two months ago, an executive order on a new selection system and additional fields in which to grant graduate study deferments seemed almost imminent and its contents predictable. Now his choice is less obvious and probably further in the future. In fact, the possibility exists that Johnson will not issue an order...
...President himself knows why he chose to remain silent. If he had submitted a specific plan, Russell probably would have gotten it included in the compromise version. Throughout the summer, even after the bill had become law, Russell offered to give any specific random system "expeditious" hearings before his Senate committee. Still, the President remained silent, except to express his displeasure at the lottery...
Coupled with the new law's abolition of graduate deferments for all but medical students, Johnson's inaction left the Defense Department with 1.1 million eligible men and no way to select its quota of 300,000 except by descending age-sequence: oldest men first. With that procedure, two-thirds of the Army's recruits starting in June would be college graduates. A Defense Department official said that the Army could not "tolerate" such a high proportion of old, recalcitrant, unmalleable...
...law does present a solution by allowing the President (or the Defense Department) to direct draft boards to call the oldest men under 26 first, or 19-year-olds, or a prescribed mixture of both. But he cannot order the drafting of 19-year-olds first, working up to the older men in ascending age-sequence. The law requires inducting the oldest men first within each age-group. The Defense Department has devised infinitely variable systems to achieve the desired age mix, all of which are un- random and penalize men born early in the calendar year, fiscal year, month...
...law also empowers the National Security Council--in effect the President, since he heads it--to grant deferments for graduate study in additional fields "essential to the national interest." The President had the Interagency Advisory Committee compile a list of such fields. In its confidential December report, the IAC recommended deferments for students in "the earth, biological, natural, and physical sciences"; "education related to critical occupations"; engineering; linguistics; mathematics; psychology; and pharmacology...