Draft Union: Success and Failure

WHEN, two months ago, 150 Harvard students held a long, fiery meeting to form the Harvard Draft Union, there were tangible signs that a broad based. campus anti-draft campaign had begun. The Draft Union would offer Harvard students a positive way of responding to the prevailing national mood of crisis. A CRIMSON poll had shown that as many as 22 per cent of the senior class were ready to flee the country or go to iail rather than serve in the armed forces. In other words, the potential for resistance was there.

The Draft Union promised to work in two ways. It would work first on an individual basis, canvassing and counseling seniors and training draft counselors who could organize similar projects in their own communities over the summer. Second, it would unite students who opposed the war into an effective political force, rallying them around the issue which threatened them with most immediacy.

The Union also sought to present a fresh image. It consciously disassociated itself from the hardened radical types at SDS. The Union was an "autonomous affiliate" of SDS, but only to get University office space and a Harvard telephone extension.

IN ITS first weeks of existence, the Draft Union organized more than 200 volunteers into decentralized units in the Houses, the Yard, and 13 Graduate departments. These workers canvassed the entire senior class and held several small sessions in draft counseling. And, as a show of strength, the Union collected more than 1150 signatures on a petition in support of Rolf Kolden, a teaching fellow in Government, who was planning to refuse induction.

Since that time, however, several problems have beset the Union. Most important has been the play of events themselves. McCarthy's unexpected success in New Hampshire, Kennedy's entry into the presidential race, Johnson's withdrawal, and the apparent progress of peace talks with Hanoi have led many people to believe that although the fighting may drag on, the war is effectively over.

But even in February, when the national mood seemed glummest, the Draft Union was having trouble getting through to people. "Most seniors still don't believe that they will be drafted after graduation," sophomore Barry A. Margolin, undergraduate coordinator of the Union, said recently. "Seniors think their draft boards are different-but 70 per cent of them are going to end up in Vietnam." The psychological impact of recent events has been to confirm these seniors' hopes of legally avoiding the draft. The immediate threat now seems less dangerous.

Leaders of the Draft Union dismiss these hopes as foolish. They cite the recent callup of 60,000 reservists, the continued bombing 225 miles north of the Demilitarized Zone, and the President's refusal to accept Hanoi's proposed sites for peace talks. But whether or not the chance for peace is real, it has drawn people away from the Draft Union. Recent meetings have been badly attended, and most of those coming are the familiar SDS faces.

HOWEVER, the Draft Union continues to work well as a service organization. It has, through its canvassing and counseling programs, reached a large number of people, giving them valuable help with their individual problems. A series of workshops next week will explore in detail the alternatives to military service and the possibility of resistance within the armed forces themselves. The Union is also valuable in maintaining communication between draft resisters, their supporters, those who enter the service, and those who emigrate to Canada. The Quincy House chapter, most particularly, has shown initiative by sending out a letter to parents of Quincy House students asking for support of the Draft Union's work.

But what the Draft Union has failed most conspicuously to do is to create an anti-draft movement which, in some small way, could be politically effective. Events have robbed the Union of some of its potential support. But the Union, in its turn, has failed to provide the tangible political program that might have given it cohesion.

Two points stand out. First, although the draft itself is the focus for the Union's work, and the Union has called for "no draft for an unjust war," it has not put together a program of its own for an end to the draft altogether, for a different system of deferments, a volunteer army, etc. There were reasons for this-the Union probably never could have agreed upon a program. It feared, for example, that by calling for an end to the draft altogether it might alienate large segments of its potentially broad-based support. But this, in turn, has made the rallying point an essentially negative one and the basis for the Union's political stand-opposition to the Vietnam war-is eroding.

Second, the Union has not solved the question of membership. There is, at the moment, no formal membership in the Union, and it now seems unlikely that a form of membership will be settled. The trouble is that with no program for action and no membership criteria, the Union has alienated no one-but neither has it attracted anyone. It remains an amorphous body, which has acquitted itself well in the limited area of draft counselling, but which has left its more important work-the creation of a unified and politically effective antidraft movement, still up in the air.