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Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, during an on-campus panel Saturday, speaks about the

Student and citizen concern over the threat of a military draft prompted a panel discussion Saturday morning at the James West Alumni Center.

Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, a ranking member of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, presented the first address on the subject.

“Whether a draft will occur really depends on how long we’re going to be in Iraq, and the troop level needed there,” Sanchez said. She continued to explain that at current rotation rates, approximately 50 percent of the troops in Iraq will consist of reserve forces and armed guards by the end of 2005.

“We have half a million troops spread out in about 120 countries around the world. The Iraq theater has over 150,000 troops; however, we haven’t been able to stabilize the situation in Iraq and we cannot leave Iraq until we do,” Sanchez said.

Joseph Maizlish, mediation coordinator and UCLA alumnus, stressed that the reason the United States needs a high amount of troops around the world is to support its high consumption of world resources.

“Really, the answer to the question of ‘Will there be a draft?’ is it depends. It depends on what kind of role the U.S. is going to have in the world and the public attitudes about this question,” Maizlish said.

Philip Carter, a lawyer and defense analyst who served on active duty and has written about the possibility of a draft for several publications, gave the last address on the subject, emphasizing the necessity and importance of a draft for the United States.

“The U.S. is at a crossroads right now – it can either be a superpower or it can be an all-volunteer army. At this point, it can’t be both,” he said.

“We have reached a point where we have a broken force and there’s no way to fix it short of a draft. ... It is really the only option that has the capabilities of raising the forces we need, and while it has a lot of problems, it also has a lot of promise. If we do this properly, America will never be caught unprepared again.”

The panel, presented by the non-profit organization Rock the Vote and UCLA Government and Community Relations, was organized by Michael Swords, the UCLA government assistant director of federal relations. He thought of the idea after encountering concern from students about the possibility of a draft.

“I had received a few e-mail inquiries from students about the question of a draft, so I thought, ‘Why don’t we have a forum about the topic?’ There seems to be an air of inevitability about this draft, but our aim was to have an ideologically diverse response, with a divergence of opinion,” Swords said.

Although organizers attempted to advertise the panel discussion by sending out over 20,000 invitations, attendance at the panel was less than expected, with about 25 people in the audience.

“We tried to publicize it as much as possible, but we were competing with too many other events going on at the same time,” Swords said.

Despite the low turnout, the audience was engaged and involved in the discussion over the draft, and expressed concern over the form the draft would take if instated.

While most panelists seemed to agree a draft is ultimately inevitable, they also said a future draft would not be the same as drafts the United States has seen in the past.

“A draft today would be different than it was before. There would be no full student deferments – most students would be allowed to finish the semester. Local boards would represent their community, which would mean there would be no elite making the decisions, and there would be a lottery system. A new draft would even have provisions for sex changes,” explained coordinator Bill Parent, associate dean of the UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Sanchez expanded on Parent’s explanation, saying, “No one will be exempt. The people who get to go are the ones with the special skills that we need, and if a draft is what Congress needs to do, then that’s what we will do.”