AS U.S. college students began packing up at the end of the academic year, no subject was more pervasive on campus or at home than what they would do about their military commitments. The question "What now?" is always posed, with varying degrees of urgency, for the college graduate. This year the military aspect, complicated by the nagging debate about the U.S. position in Viet Nam, makes the answer more difficult than it has been for a long time. The purpose of this week's cover story is to examine the factors involved in this dilemma of '66.

TIME correspondents across the country nominated candidates for the cover from major and minor campuses, and the editors chose Gary William Wilson, graduating from California State College at Los Angeles, as the one to represent the class. As might be expected, nearly everyone who worked on the story had been touched at one time or an other and in various ways by the central question. The Los Angeles bureau's John Shaw, a key man among the 31 correspondents who contributed to the story, served two years (1949-51) as a draftee in the British army, and much more recently spent two years covering the war for us in Viet Nam. Writer William Johnson, for whom this is the 16th cover story, served two years in the Navy, was mustered out as a lieutenant j.g. in 1956, and has written many of our major Viet Nam stories. For Peter Kurd, who was a combat artist for LIFE in World War II, the frames of reference were many. He discovered that the Army officer who came to pose for the combat figure in the cover background had attended his alma mater, the New Mexico Military Institute. He has a 20-year-old son who before long will face a problem similar to that of this year's graduating class. Working in the faster medium of watercolor rather than his more familiar tempera, Hurd immediately liked his subject, sought to convey the impression of a young man seriously pondering the future--which surely represents the mood of the class of 1966.

AS a service to college-student subscribers, TIME recently distributed a four-page report on military service designed to give them a useful summary of available opportunities and options in connection with meeting their military obligations. Copies of Military Service: Where Do You Stand? may be obtained at no charge by writing to Time Education Department, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, N.Y. 10020.

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