Teachers' Active Duty Reduced to Six Months

Members of the teaching profession can fulfill their military service with three to six months active duty and seven and a half years in the reserve, instead of the usual two years active and six in the active reserves, the government has announced.

The Office of Defense Mobilization has listed teaching along with 23 other occupations, most of them scientific, whose members qualify for the exemption.

John P. Elder, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said that the new law might draw more graduate students because of the draft advantages. "However, I don't think it is a very admirable way to get now teachers," he added. Elder questioned the quality of people who would become teachers merely to shorten their military service.

Teaching Fellow Excluded

Major M. J. Mullin of the Boston draft board said that the new law would not apply to teaching fellows. "We consider them students first and teachers second, so they retain a student status."

John F. Troy, manpower specialist of the Office of Defense Mobilization, stated that the purpose of the law was to help young scientists and researchers continue uninterrupted in their work. He indicated that the case would have to be reviewed by the local draft board on an individual basis.

"A further advantage of the law would be that the teachers would not be absent for as long a time when "the need for them is so desperate," Elder added. The active reserves would only entail attendance at weekly training sessions.

Act Voted Last Year

The move to cut the active service term of some jobholders was passed under the Reserve Forces Act of 1955, but the specific list of occupations was not issued until last week.

President Eisenhower said that the order was to "provide for a minimum of disruption to the development of industrial technology and defense-related research."

Among the scientific professions listed are: chemist, design engineer draftsman, geologist, geophysicist, mathematician, microbiologist, physicist and physiologist.