KANSAN COMMENT
Use as last resort
from the Spartan Daily San Jose State College
The student (II-S) deferment from training and service in the armed forces, which allows hundreds of thousands of college students to "escape the draft" for up to six years, just isn't the Godsend that it's made out to be.
While it most certainly grants a reprieve from military duty, the additional problems it can create are in many ways more repressive than two years of service at age 19.
Take the case of the student who chooses to sign up for a II-S deferment at age 19 in order to attend the college of his choice. During his four years of "higher education" he not only is exposed to new ideas—religious, moral and philosophical—but he also finds his country engaging itself in an aggressive war in which he does not believe. One in which civilians, including women and children, have been slaughtered wholesale.
At this point, his application for Conscientious Objector status undoubtedly will be turned down because he did not apply to it at age 19, and he will be faced with a choice of fighting in a war he does not support or going to jail as a felon.
Then there is the case of the student who gets married and has a child while attending college with a II-S deferment. Since he has taken a II-S deferment after 1967, his application
for a fatherhood deferment will not be accepted. (While there is not specific mention of fatherhood deferments on the form he signed to obtain a II-S classification, this student is told, "By signing this form, you waived your rights to a deferment under fatherhood.")
Signing the II-S application form also nails students who would be eligible for any other deferment. This is taken care of with the provision "No person who has received a student deferment under the provisions of this paragraph shall thereafter be granted a deferment under this subsection, except for extreme hardship to dependents, or for graduate study, occupation, or employment necessary to the maintenance of the national health, safety, or interest."
What 19-year-old, entering his local draft board office alone and without legal consultation, realizes the significance of this carefully worded "rider" on his application for "student status?"
In this era of a war which is alien to our generation and a Selective Service System that is inequitable, unfair, and in many counties downright corrupt, the Spartan Daily advises those considering the deferment route to use the II-S as a last resort. Investigate all other possibilities. The way of life you save could be your own.
S.C. & ED CREATED BY © 1970 ED OAKLEY S.C. WILSON
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Tense night at KU
To the editor:
There have been many letters to the UDK stating various individual's opinions on this recent matter of A Tense Night at Old KU—most of them expressing varying degrees of up-tightness, a not unnatural physiological reaction. Basically they all have had the same perspective on the matter. I, on the other hand, am probably insane, which has the advantage of providing me a rather novel view. Maybe it was Dr. Verdu's lecture on Heidegger's ontology of Death which precipitated this new strangeness in my head—but no, it began before then, maybe when Abbie Hoffman lectured on the ontology of Death. ("My mind Jes' snapped when I was three from seein far too much teevee.") Oh, I don't know; in any case, I've just become ontological instead of moral, though I'm not very good at the game yet.
Consider the following: Just recently I dined with Our Ancient Greek Fathers—known in Pig Nation as Pre-Socratic, i.e., before man became moral. The dinner was at their invitation since they were anxious to know the course of History since their time and whither it is headed now. I explained to them that History, from the marriage of Jerusalem with Athens, had thus far succeeded in producing the Germans, and that these Germans had succeeded in murdering God. At least two men who have understood that this has happened, how it happened, and why it happened, were Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Stirner (and it can be argued that Martin Heidegger is a third). Of course, it is not surprising that they were both (or all three) German. Nietzsche first: "How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? ... With what water could we cleanse ourselves? ... Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event—and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history
hitherto!" The Greek Fathers were over-awed by the work of their progeny—but I cautioned them, that was not all. Max Stirner next: "The Germans are the first and foremost exponents of the historical vocation of radicalism; they alone are radical, and they alone justly so. There are no others so relentless and ruthless; not only do they bring about the collapse of the existing world so that they may themselves stand fast, they also bring about the collapse of themselves. When Germans demolish, a god must fall, a world must pass away. To the Germans, destruction is creation, the pulverization of the temporal is eternity." Right on, Max! What a trip!
Well, the point is, as I explained to the Greek Fathers, that we have all become Germans with the death of God—or at least those of us who take our ontological, historical heritage seriously are Germans. With God murdered, we men who do take it seriously must make ourselves worthy to be His murderers; hence, the Ascendance of Violence. Germans are notorious for their feeling for History—and that is exactly what this whole matter of A Tense Night at Old KU is all about: ontological history. From Ontological History there is no escape; one can only fulfill his place in it. And Hegel's Dialectic marches on! Crunch, squash, boosh, tramp, tramp, squeal, Alleluia! If you don't care to plow through all the literature of the history of man's ontologizing Reality, then there is a brief summarizing passage in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, called "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable: the History of an Error," which he wrote just especially for such slouches who would not undertake the more comprehensive research. Roughly, according to this brief history, we today are at stage five, which is described as follows: "5. The 'true' world—an idea which is no longer good for anything, not even obligating—an idea which has become useless and superfluous—
consequently, a refuted idea: Let us abolish it! (Bright day; breakfast; return of **bon sens** and cheerfulness; Plato's embarrassed blush; pandemonium of all free spirits.)" Now, ain't that schon? "Good Lord, Maud, it's the Dialectic skrunching our house—our TEEVY!" Well, there is no need to get too upset about all this; remember, there is a stage six which follows (in ontological history): "6. The true world—we have abolished. What world has remained? The apparent one perhaps? But no! With the true world we have also abolished the apparent one. (Noon; moment of the briefest shadow; end of the longest error; high point of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA.)" Now, ain't that schon?
Alan Faust Neal Reeder Caldwell senior
The Greek Fathers left after this after-dinner conversation, but reminded me to make an offering at Delphi in the near future. No, they didn't mean any burnt offerings, they meant to blow out the candles of my old cathedral, i.e., morality, and become ontological. It was probably some pre-ontological person who burned the Union. But they have their place in Ontological History too. So do the pigs.
X X X
To the editor:
I feel that I must write this letter of congratulations in the most simple language possible as those of you to whom it is meant may still be wearing diapers.
Congratulations to those of you who burned YOUR student union. You have at last destroyed a symbol of the establishment that YOU assisted in building. Your childishness is unsurpassed.
Congratulations, I hope you get your just rewards. Gary J. West
Edina, Minn., graduate student