How to be Vital

Numerous ways to avoid a year of raking leaves and picking up papers in an army camp lie hidden in the "Announcement of the Courses of Instruction Under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences." Neither the Government nor the University has made this really clear to Harvard's potential draftees. Concentrators in chemistry, physics, or engineering are not they only non-R.O.T.C. men who can hope to escape a buck private ship on the basis of their undergraduate studies. The army needs everything from psychometrists to meteorologists, and a well chosen course or two may open the door to further army training, if not directly to a commission or specialized job.

However, complete or exact information about these possibilities is not to be had. In the first place, the Army is ignorant of the content of Harvard courses, while the local instructors are equally vague about the requirements of various Army departments. In the second place, the rules concerning some fields are hazy and flexible, so that it is up to the individual to convince the Army that he has had enough training to make him a more useful man than the next.

For instance, Astronomy 2a, plus some skill in trigonometry, will provide the key to a commission for men who pass the physical requirements of the Navy's V-7 program. Geography 10a, on the other hand, does not contain enough weather forecasting to make an Air Corps meteorologist; but draftees with this elementary training behind them, if they speak up loudly enough, will stand a better chance than their comrades of being selected for training by the Army. Psychology concentrators who want to test the I. Q. of their fellows will stand a poor chance of making the A. G. O. Personnel Procedures Section of the basis of Psychology 10b, but can do much better with Psych 135, if they convince the Army that they know their stuff. Also a recent request from the Department of the Interior asks for biology students to help the Fish and Wild Life division test for water pollution around munitions factories and military establishments, starting at $2000 yearly. Although it has not yet been stated whether this is a full-fledged defense job conferring draft exemption, the chances are good. It may conceivably be left up to each local Draft Board. The essential requirement is "six semester-hours of physiology"; Biology 3a covers two-thirds of this.

Social science men are eligible for Washington defense jobs, many of which grant classification as vital and undraftable. The requirement here is a Civil Service examination covering any of several combinations of history, gov., ec., or sociology courses. One such exam calls for the equivalent of an economics major including Ec 21a.

Mr. Casner's University Hall office contains most of the answers for economists, chemists, and engineers. But in the less obvious fields the information is either nowhere or else scattered over the countryside among several instructors and Army Bureaus. Of course any ambitious lad with some diligence and luck, can eventually track down the answers to his questions and determine whether he can include a vital course in his program, or whether he already has one. However, a real effort by the University to collect the relevant facts would not only save useless steps and interviews but actually increase the number of trained men available for defense. Compiling the data and making it easily accessible will go far towards preventing trained men from wasting their talents in a tank while some obscure defense industry or Army office cries out for a skilled palcobotanist or Sanskrit scholar.