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Show Signpost September26,1980 page 6 Why Not Draft The Middle Aged, Not Youth? Editorials Editor-in-chief Maggi Holmes Managing Editor Bryan Shiffer Features Editor Wendy Moore Sports Editor Ron Bevan Photo Editor Charlie Pomerleau Copy Editor Maureen Lewis Reporters John Donahue Tom Horton Karen McCracken Donna Chapman Business Manager Julie Sumner Asst. Business Manager Tracy Socwell Salesmen Bart Patchins Mark Jenson Don Pederson Production Manager Don Williams Layout and Art Kelly Rountree Sandy Downey Rick Jones Janversan Hamid The Weber State Signpost is published by the Media Board during fall, winter and spring quarters. It is producted as a laboratory newspaper for the Department of Communication. The Signpost is published Tuesday and Friday except during examination and vacation periods. Opinions expressed on the editorial page do not necessarily represent those of the student body, the administration, the WSC Media Board or that of the Signpost staff. Subscription price: $20 per school year. The office is located in the east side of the Union Building across from the games area. The mailing address is Signpost, Weber State College, no. 21 10, 3750 Harrison Blvd., Ogden Utah. U44U8. by James A. Stegenga All the schemes suggested so far for reviving the draft, ask for the calling up of 19-year-olds to meet the military's manpower needs. But if it's really necessary to resume conscription (big "if" but let it go), I think a case can be made for drafting 50-year-olds instead. Instead of calling up a couple hundred thousand immature 19-year-olds each year who will have to be mothered and socialized to accept the rigors of training, the privations of military life, and the duties associated with ther assigned soldierly jobs, the military could draft emotionally mature 50-year-olds who have spent their adult lives working in organizations, paitiently coping, understanding and accepting legitimate restriction, suffering idiots, and shouldering responsibilities. The military would be spared most of the time and effort now expended keeping exuberant and only partially civilized teen-agers on their tight leashes. The 50-year-old recruits would doubtless be more self-disciplined and self-controled. The military could then do without whole fleets of baby-sitting sergeants, counselors, stockade mangers, and MPs patrolling brothel areas. Grown-up soldiers would just be a lot easier to handle. They'd be more capable than your basic incompetent19-year-old, too. More of them would know technical trades. More would know how to read training manuals, blueprints, maps, and the colonel's mind. They'd have a better feel for the ins and outs of manipulating organizations and getting things done. They'd be more experiened at working smoothly with other people, typing memos, solving problems under pressure, staying healthy, improvising, running machines, doing their own laundry, entertaining themselves, fixing stuck windows, following orders, staying awake at night, and all the other chores of soldiering. Ask yourself who you'd rather go into combat with: the gawky kid down the street who recently barely graduated from high school, or your grown-up grocer who used to be a truck mechanic? The military's needs for sound, capable people would be better met by drafting mature, competent 50-year-olds than by relying on inexperienced, immature kids. This 50-year-old recruit who's already made his dent and his pile, however meagre, has a lot more of a stake in the system to protect than the 19-year-old, too. Having spent his life producing and benefiting from the American Way, he'll be more willing to sacrf ice to protect and defend it. Having come to appreciate the blessings of liberty, the market economy, comforable eateries, and interesting newspapers when he can find them, he'll be a more reliable defender of the realm than the youth who hasn't begun to appreciate what's worth defending. At the same, the 50-year-old recruit is apt to be less deferential toward authorities his own age who propose unnecessary, unwise, impractical, or improper foreign policy adventuring. More so than his 19-year-old son or neice. The 50-year-old soldier is likely to ask the old civilians in Washinton: "You're sending me where to do what? You gotta be kidding." So if he would be more likely to obey sensible directives, he'd be less likely to follow the commands of silly old men with unsound schemes. We are understandably rnd appropriately uncomfortable when we notice that our military forces are blacker and poorer then the civilians back home. By the same token we ought to be "Meatballs 5 J uncomfortable that our soldiers are so much younger than our population. Where is it written that the young should do the sacrificing, killing, and dying for the old? America's men now push these responsibilities off onto America's boys. It's time our men (and adult women, too) stepped foreward to shoulder the burdens of our nation's defense. And is it too harsh to suggest that when soldiers must die in warfare it's better (or at least not quite as sad) for 50-year-olds to miss their last 20 years than 20-year-olds to miss their last 50? Consider, finally, a couple of collateral social benefits of drafting 50-year-olds. It would be good for their health for 200,000 or so paunchy recruits each year to do some physical training, lose some weight, and strengthen some cardiovascular systems. And it might be good for the nation's economic health, too, if each year 200,000 50-year-olds who are now clogging the upper reaches of hundreds of civilian bureaucracies and corporations took a two-year leave, clearing the way for new people and new ideas. When they returned to their civilian lives, these citizen soldiers would bring back something valuable, too, some ex-perinces from a different real world, some brand new prespec-tives as well as a lift in their steps. The chance to command a basic training company of adult dentists, mechanics, car salesmen, corporate poohahs, and even society matrons might almost almost tempt me to re-enlist in a different, interesting, more just, and probably better Army... without waiting a few years to be drafted for the second time. Administrative Offices Are Inconsiderate It has recently been rather rudely brought to my attention, of the lack of communication between administration offices and their disregard for the students need for information. I had applied to Weber State College for admittance this fall and had been expected by the main admission offices. I had planned to enter into the Allied Health branch of education. I had applied quite early, realizing the limited number of slots available. I had assumed that because I had been admitted thru the main offices, my application had been forwarded to the Allied Health offices. Ah, but no, it was not so. Only after watiting much to long, trusting, admittedly niavely, that my application had been forwarded, did I write again. Imagine my surprize when on return mail, I leaned that I have to apply with the Allied Health office also. How such a small detail eluded me is not hard to discern. At no time had I any information that I had to registar twice. I have since talked with several students and prespective students of WSC, and found this to be a not to uncommon incident. I found this treatment high-handed and callous. Surely the administration must realize I have little knowledge of the internal workings of their offices (and little inclination to learn) and should have realized how much trouble this useless inconvience is to everyone, including themselves. While the timing for me to return to school is now optimum, it may not be so next year. Hopefully by then I will be a bit more wary of the buearcratic pitfalls as this. Being a person who tries to be as realistic as possible, I realize that this letter will have nil impact on the problem, as I discribed the point of this is that, I am not alone in this problem. And I will certianly not (if you will forgive the phrase) put my eggs in one basket again. From a sincerely digruntled and iisappointed"ex"student by Rountree and Osburn |