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| Trinity Campus |
Let me first say that some of my friends who read this will not like it, others who know me and lived through the mid 60's to early 70's will understand...to the rest, it's just a story. If you were a male, between 18 and 26 during the height of the Vietnam conflict then you had a lot on your mind. Mostly that you were going into military service one way or another....either by joining up or being drafted. If you were "normal", healthy and hadn't been convicted of a major crime...you were going to be drafted, PERIOD. The only way to delay the draft was to stay in school....as long as you were in college and passing, you could avoid the draft but once you graduated, you went straight to the top of the list. There were other ways of legally staying out of the draft but it's a complicated discussion and would take to long to explain. The draft could be dodged by illegally hiding from it by running away and living "underground" or you could flee to Canada or Mexico to avoid it. Was I a "draft dodger"...I guess in the strictest definition of the term, I was....I avoided the draft but staying in college. I basically turned a four year degree into seven years...mostly because of the draft but also because of other mitigating circumstances. My job and my mindset at the time was to do everything possible within the system and legal to avoid being drafted. But as proved by one of my earlier blogs....when all else failed and it was definite that I would be drafted....I would go and do my duty.
OK, I graduated from high school in May of 1964...I was already attending Trinity University during my Senior year in high school and all summer of 1964. I entered Trinity in August of 1964 as a second semester freshman and that put me miles ahead of the true incoming freshmen. Life was pretty good at Trinity, at least for the first year. I was in college, I had a nice car, I had a small job (I'll discuss that later), I had money, my grades were ok and things were cooking right along.....AND I WAS STAYING OUT OF THE DRAFT!!
Trinity was a private Methodist University. It was supported by the Methodist Church. It was also one of the top private schools in the country. Because Trinity was essentially a private church school...it demanded that EVERY student take two years of religion to graduate. A degree from Trinity would afford you the ability to write your own ticket in life, especially in Texas. Because Trinity was a private school....it was VERY expensive...certainly much more costly than the state schools. Back then, and still today, the thought was the pricier the college, the better education you could get and the better job waiting for you at graduation. I mention this because many, if not most students came from very wealthy families. My family was upper middle class but a far distance from being "wealthy".....especially Texas wealthy. The reason I mention this is that it sets the stage for some of my friendships and the easy access to lots of distractions.
Trinity was also a school that offered ROTC on campus....this stood for Reserve Officer Training Corp. Since Trinity was a private school, they could get government money by offering ROTC. The government would pay Trinity a set amount of money per male student who took ROTC. At Trinity, ROTC was NOT an elective...it was MANDATORY that every male student took ROTC the first two years. By doing this, Trinity was able to maximize the money the government would pay them. ROTC was becoming a flash point all over the country. The "anti war" crowd was looking for anything to criticize or demonize to further help them organize the "students" or young people against the conflict in Vietnam. The total mobilization against the war would not culminate until roughly 1967 into 1968.
OK, here I was...in a college that made me take religion AND be forced to take ROTC. I was certainly having my struggles with religion and I was certainly not wanting to be trained for war by having to take ROTC. Do you see the conflict here....a church school supporting the war effort...I really started struggling with this real life oxymoron.
I was a good student making very good grades. I was smart, articulate, had a pretty good personality and had an opinion on everything and not really afraid to voice it. I also liked my freedom....at this stage in my life, I was at the point of knowing that nobody was going to tell me what to do or how to do it. Not my parents, not my elders, not my superiors, not teachers or police or anybody else who thought they had authority over me. Was I heading for disaster...yes I was and at a million miles per hour!! As discussed earlier, my upbringing was very liberal and basically I got away with just about everything.
I decided that I would rebel at Trinity by taking on the two sacred cows....religion and ROTC. Both the religion and the ROTC courses were pass/fail.....no grades were given and they did not affect your GPA or grade point average. Knowing this to be the case, I decided to play the devil's advocate in my religion classes and just be an overall asshole in my ROTC classes. Who cared anyway!! I won't go into everything but I challenged the religion professor on almost every point he was trying to make. I just took the opposite position whether it was my true beliefs or not. I was labeled an Agnostic or better yet, an Atheist..I didn't care...at least I was making other students think. Needless to say, I failed the course (all three semesters) but they couldn't kick me out because they were getting money from the Methodist Church. As for ROTC, a friend of mine who thought a whole lot like me, decided that we would try to set the record for the total number of demerits we could get in one semester. A demerit is....
| Noun | 1. | demerit - a mark against a person for misconduct or failure; usually given in school or armed forces; "ten demerits and he loses his privileges" |
During my third semester at Trinity...I hooked up with some buddies who were more looking for a good time than to get a quality education. Again, needless to say...my grades dropped and at the end of my third semester...I was kicked out of school. This was now the summer of 1965 and was about to loose my college draft deferment. If I didn't find another school to take me in, I would be drafted so in the summer of 1965, I enrolled at SAC or San Antonio College. Even though I flunked out of Trinity (they had higher standards), I still had pretty good grades and was able to enroll at SAC. I dodged a bullet. Trinity had informed the draft board (which they were required to do) that I had flunked out so my draft status was changed from a 1-S (student deferment) to a 1-A (available for the draft). Thank goodness for government bureaucracy. By the time the draft board got the notification that I flunked out of Trinity, SAC had sent them a notice that I was a full time student and was classified as 1-S. This would become a valuable lesson to learn and I was going to manipulate the system as long as I could. Yes, it would catch up with me in the near future.
I am going to list the different types of draft deferments because I would get to know them well and it gives a better understanding to future blogs.
1-A=available for the draft
1-S=student deferment
1-Y=available only during declared war (remember, Vietnam was not declared war)..this was also used as
a medical deferment as I was about to learn
2-A=deferred because of a critical job...I would come to know this one too.
There were a lot of other deferments but they didn't effect me so I won't go into them. I recently read a statistic that said over 60% of all eligible males that were available for the draft between 1965 and 1972...never served because of the deferment system.
I think I will end here.....I will start my next blog at San Antonio College in the summer of 1965.
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