Nixon Wants to End Undergrad Deferments

President Nixon will propose the elimination of all student and occupational draft deferments.

The Administration will present the proposal to Congress at hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee next month. If Congress passes the proposal, persons now holding deferments will not be affected.

Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense, said that the draft lottery was the first step towards a fairer draft, and that Nixon now "wants to move in the direction so that all young men are treated equally and fairly."

Congressional Action

While a Presidential directive could end occupational deferments, it would take Congressional action to eliminate undergraduate student deferments. When Congress approved the lottery last year, they voted to maintain the deferments.

He added that the Administration hoped to "remove some of the inequities that do exist in the draft." The deferments have been a source of controversy in Washington recently. Many feel that, even with the random lottery, the draft is discriminatory in that the deferments benefit only those who can afford higher education.

In 1968 President Johnson ended graduate deferments, except for medical and divinity students. He was not in favor of ending undergraduate deferments at that time, even though a Presidential commission re-commended in 1967 that all student and job deferments be ended.

More than two million students hold deferments.