Monro Backs Draft Lottery System; Urges Alternate Forms of Service

Dean Monro said Wednesday that he would prefer a draft deferment procedure along the lines of a lottery to the current system based on class rank and national tests. Under the lottery system, he said, there would be no deferment for students.

He also proposed that people be exempted from military service by participating in other forms of national service.

In the lottery system all men over 18 would be assigned numbers and placed in the lottery. Then the numbers would be picked at random and the people whose numbers were chosen would be drafted whether or not they were in school.

A person, however, could have his name removed from the lottery by informing the government that he intended to go into some other form of national service such as the Peace Corps or Vista.

"I am not in favor of military service for everybody," he said. For many people the service in the Armed Forces would be a waste of time, he added.

But he was pessimistic about the chances of establishing a lottery system for the draft. The federal government has been committed to the present system too long, Monro said.

He criticized the present procedure because it creates an army composed chiefly of the underprivileged. The poor--and especially Negroes--are "intensely subject to the draft," Monro commented.

Monro's criticism emerged as a result of the debate on the draft created by the institution of a deferment procedure similar to the one used during and after the Korean War. General Lewis B. Hershey, national Selective Service director, has said that present deferments will be re-examined now in light of class standing and scores on a new national test.

It was announced yesterday that the tests will be given on three alternate dates: May 14, May 21 and June 3 of this year.

Col. Paul F. Feeney, deputy director of Massachusetts Selective Service, explained that the test if it is similar to the one used for the Korean War period, would consist of 150 questions.