Academic Expulsion and "Military Obligation"
In a pre-Vietnam society, military service was largely seen as a positive, especially for young men not in college. Thus, it was a viable, and often encouraged, path for college-aged men to take.
At Dartmouth, students facing expulsion or academic suspension were often encouraged to take their time off as an opportunity to join the military. Especially during Jake Guest’s first tenure at Dartmouth, when the military didn’t have any of the negative connotations that came later on, doing so was a way of displaying to the college that you could succeed in a disciplinary system.
“So first of all, the College, the Dean, saw that, especially someone like me, who I think he rightfully suspected, could get pretty distracted. He wanted me to find something that was going to require some discipline and maybe make me think-- have different thoughts about how I wanted to be at Dartmouth and the military seemed like-- the College, their attitude was they wanted to know what you were going to do, because they didn't want you just hanging out for two or three years and then applying to come back in again. They wanted to know that you were doing something that made sense in that context. So the military was a good direction to go.” -Jake Guest
Adding to this was the fact that the draft obligation loomed over college-aged men, even in an era of relative peace for the United States. Being suspended from Dartmouth, or any other college for that matter, acted as an incentive for students to fulfill this military obligation.
“And because one of the things back then was they still had the draft, so there was an expression back then. It would say, well, you should take, maybe you take care of your military obligation, because everybody was sort of obligated to. Men were obligated-- young men were obligated to be available for the draft, and some got drafted, and some joined. But it was sort of like, well, sooner or later, I'll probably get drafted, so maybe take care of that.” -Jake Guest