Patrick McCarthy, Professor of English, tells the funny story of how he managed to avoid the draft. He went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee in 1969, but his draft board was in Birmingham, Alabama, "the most godawful place in the world to have a draft board," and the conscription agents turned down his application for a fatherhood deferment. He went to Birmingham to appear personally before the board. "Things did not go well. They regarded me as a smart-ass and I regarded them as a bunch of ignorant rednecks. We were both right." McCarthy describes the Selective Service System as corrupt, because the SSS Director, Lewis B. Hershey, had ordered local draft boards to ignore Congressional law concerning deferments. McCarthy was drafted a few months after entering grad school, but took advantage of an ambiguous directive by President Nixon to postpone conscription until the end of the school year. He describes the various steps he took to keep postponing induction for the next 3 years, to much laughter from the audience.