Selective Service offices to combine under Brown

By Bruce Weinberg The Undergraduate Selective Service Office will be closed at the end of this school year, it was learned from sources at the Institute Wednesday. Starting .in June the office will be-combined with the Graduate Selective Service Office under Sanborn Brown, Associate Dean of the Graduate School. Miss Joanne Robinson, currently the Graduate Selective Service Advisor, will take over the duties of advising the undergraduates as well. The move, brought on by the lottery and expected revisions of the draft, is designed to improve the efficiency of the counseling service by centralizing it. This would mark a return to the combined offices of two years ago, before the retirement of Mrs. Eleanor Lutz. According to Irwin Sizer, Dean of the Graduate School, as long as undergraduates are getting student deferments the draft is "basically a problem of graduate education." It is the seniors, who have to decide whether to go to graduate school or to work, who need the greatest amount of draft counseling. Since 75% of MIT students go on to do graduate work, which is not deferred, they need counseling on possible ways to obtain their graduate education. The undergraduate, with his 2-S, does not need such extensive aid, requiring only a few forms to be filled out. By centralizing the offices, Sizer continued, the problems of staff members who need deferments could be better handled. In the future, if student deferments are phased out, only 19 year olds would be affected by the draft. This would be a fairly automatic process and therefore would not require a large counseling service. Additionally, if a volunteer army is instituted, the need for draft counseling would be completely eliminated. The move has come as a surprise to MIT's undergraduates, currently visiting the Undergraduate Selective Service Office to fill out forms for deferments nextyear. Joel Hemmelstein '70, undergraduate member of the Faculty Advisory Committee on Selective Service, reported that the decision was unexpected, not having been brought up before the conmittee. By Bob Dennis Four leading journalists discussed the controversial issues of mass media at Wednesday night's Compton Seminar in Kresge. Entitled "The Mass Communication of Complicated Issues", the seminar featured varying responses to' charges of the media being intimidated by the attacks of Vice-President Agnew. Wallace cites simplification Corporation Chairman James R. Killian, who served as moderator, introduced Mike Wallace as the first speaker. The veteran CBS, correspondent agreed with criticism that television news is often oversimplified and overdramatized. Wallace asserted that television's presentation of news suffers because the attention span of viewers is limited, many programs are of an evanescent nature that precludes their developing innovative techniques, and since viewers find many issues too complicated for their liking and prefer simpler shows. Declaring that television news is usually good as a summarizing entity, Wallace conceded that the medium falls short on such complex issues as ABM and welfare. In considering such issues, the viewer needs time to stop and reconsider. While television is useful in sketching the outlines of such issues and getting citizens involved, Wallace said that viewers must themselves follow up on the issue and go elsewhere in order to ananlyze the "if's, and's, and but's" of a complicated issue. "Participatory Journalism" Thomas Winship, Editor of The Boston Globe, followed with a call for "participatory journalism". He declared that newspapers must not be merely observers but must be an "advocate for change". He commented that only elected politicians have more power than newspapers to effect change. Winship asserted that the media must take the lead in ending the current "national copout" on major issues. He called for the press to be more