How did student deferments influence public opinion, campus protests, and antiwar movements?
Executive summary
Student deferments under the Cold War draft altered who fought and who protested: millions of undergraduates held II‑S/2‑S deferments that delayed induction and helped swell college enrollment, which both insulated many students from immediate service and focused anger on draft policy when deferments were narrowed in 1966–69 [1] [2] [3]. Changes that exposed students to induction—grade-based review of deferments in 1966 and the 1969 lottery reforms that left educational deferments intact but altered risks—triggered mass campus protests, draft‑resistance campaigns, and intensified public debate over fairness and class inequality [4] [5] [6].
1. How deferments shaped the raw politics: who was at risk and who wasn’t
Student deferments made college enrollment a practical buffer against conscription: during the 1960s millions of men carried II‑S/2‑S status, which delayed or postponed their eligibility and thereby concentrated draft risk among non‑students and lower‑income men; scholars and contemporary accounts link this disparity to public outrage about the draft’s fairness [1] [6] [3]. Available sources do not mention precise totals beyond the “millions” and specific socioeconomic breakdowns beyond general observations in these accounts [1] [6].
2. The policy shifts that converted private fear into public protest
When Selective Service changed rules in 1966—introducing academic review that threatened deferments for students with poorer grades—and later when Nixon moved toward a lottery and other reforms, those technical shifts turned private avoidance strategies into public political fuel; campuses erupted in demonstrations aimed directly at draft policy and the institutions seen as complicit [4] [5] [3]. The 1966 grade‑review provoked large sit‑ins such as the University of Wisconsin demonstration and helped drive the expansion of campus antiwar organizing [5].
3. Campus culture: recruitment, recruitment protests, and the growth of antiwar organizations
Deferments created a student population that was both relatively safe from immediate induction and politically mobile; that population became the backbone of campus groups like SDS and the Boston Draft Resistance Group, which shifted from limited campus dissent into large‑scale anti‑draft campaigns, teach‑ins, and direct action—often targeting recruiters (Dow Chemical), draft boards, and testing centers associated with deferment exams [7] [1] [8] [9]. The availability of deferments also meant many students who might otherwise have been conscripted could lead and sustain prolonged organizational activity [7] [8].
4. Draft avoidance, symbolism and escalation: from deferments to civil disobedience
As the inequities of deferments became salient, tactics escalated: draft card burnings, surrendering deferments, refusal of induction, and disruptive actions at draft boards became commonplace—acts that turned personal avoidance into moral and political statements and broadened the antiwar coalition beyond campuses to draft counselors, GI‑civilian alliances, and legal aid groups [8] [6]. These symbolic acts framed deferment privilege not merely as self‑preservation but as a structural injustice that sustained the war [8] [6].
5. Public opinion and the politics of fairness
Reporting and historians link changing public attitudes to the perception that the draft advantaged the middle and upper classes—college students and the politically connected—while poorer and minority men bore the battlefield risk; that perception fed domestic political pressure for reform [6] [10] [3]. Nixon’s reforms, including the 1969 lottery, were cast as responses to this backlash even while deferments continued to shape who was actually called up [2] [3].
6. Limits, counterpoints and what the sources do not say
Sources collected here document correlation and contemporaneous claims linking deferments to protest growth, but they do not quantify the exact causal share of deferments in changing public opinion versus other factors (casualties, media coverage, civil‑rights activism). They also note that deferments were only one of many avoidance paths—medical exemptions, emigration, National Guard service—so deferments were an important but not singular driver of the antiwar movement [10] [6] [8]. Available sources do not provide national polling time‑series that isolates deferment policy as the decisive variable shaping popular opinion.
7. Why this mattered then — and why it still matters now
Deferments transformed a military bureaucracy into a political accelerant: by creating visible, class‑linked privileges and sparking dramatic campus resistance, they helped professionalize student organizing, expand civil‑disobedience repertoires, and force national reform debates about conscription and fairness [3] [8] [4]. Contemporary campus conflicts over war and campus policing echo those dynamics, reminding us that the technical details of who is exempt from state power carry powerful political consequences [11] [12].
Sources cited above document these connections in primary contemporary reporting and retrospective analyses [1] [6] [4] [8] [3].