Page 270 - WhyAsInY

Why (as in yaverbaum)
1964, in response to the real or imagined firing on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin by the North Vietnamese, Congress essentially gave Presi- dent Johnson a blank check to escalate the American involvement. By the end of 1965, there were about 185,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam and, by the end of 1966, there would be over 385,000, with no end in sight. (The numbers would peak at about 536,000 in 1968.) Because there was no end in sight, the Selective Service System (the local draft boards) had the task of finding the manpower. College students, however, were classified “2-S” and were thereby given a “deferment” of their service obligation. At the same time, anti-war sentiment in the nation was mobilized and also growing. Moreover, there were those who felt that army service, exposure to danger, should not fall only on those who could not go to college or could not otherwise maneuver themselves to avoid Vietnam.
For whatever reason, after the idea of reclassifying students who were in some to-be-designated bottom percentage of their class in col- lege was floated and dropped, arguably because such a system would unfairly penalize people who went to the more selective colleges, a new idea was hatched: why not administer a uniform test to all college stu- dents so that, based upon test performance, one could more fairly determine who might live and who might die? Naturally, at Amherst at least, the test was dubbed the “War Boards.” So it was that the entire student body was assembled in the gym (in a part that I think was then known as the “Cage”) and, with No. 2 pencils in hand, awaited the instructions of a uniformed officer, whose delivery reminded me of my SAT sketch during Senior Sing in high school. The problem, as you might have guessed, was not the substance of the (seemingly very easy) test; it was sustaining the appearance of the right attitude. Few of the students were necessarily respectful of authority in the first place; many, when they got to see the questions, had to suppress their relief, if not their laughter; many fought to conceal their political views; most just could not believe the surreality of the experience; and everyone wanted to get the hell out of the Cage as soon as possible. To make matters worse, the test was scheduled for two hours, but within forty-five min- utes the exodus started, not in protest but because the fugitives had
• 252 •