As students in the current senior class reach or near age 18, all are inevitably thinking about their future, especially with college applications and the feeling of general impatience that most seniors experience. However, male seniors will have to address one more issue: registering with the Selective Service.

Under current federal law, all male citizens are required to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthday, which then makes them subject to a military draft should the federal government order a conscription.

However, the current system of mandatory conscription needs to be reworked; no one should be forced to serve in the military.

The ultimate reason for this is that no individual should be forced by his or her government to put himself or herself in a potentially lethal situation. And the military is often one potentially life-threatening situation after another.

The U.S. has undoubtedly the most advanced military on the planet. In 2006, the Chinese government-sponsored “Yellow Book of International Politics” ranked the U.S. as the most powerful nation-state in the world. With 1.5 million active personnel, the current American military has shown that it possesses more than enough firepower to fight wars on multiple fronts, as displayed most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the draft simply isn’t needed anymore. And practically speaking, it just isn’t feasible. The draft is one of the biggest reasons the Vietnam War was as hated as it was. If it were to be actually instituted, the level of public outcry would be out of control. There is simply no point in having men sign up for a program that would be completely dysfunctional if put into action.

So often the draft is associated with patriotism and devotion to the state. But in the free society of the U.S., forcing citizens to serve in the military involuntarily simply does not contribute to patriotism.

In a volunteer military, every soldier quite literally wants to “be there” and serve our nation in its military pursuits. What good does it do for the quality of the military if the government forces citizens who have no interest in fighting to potentially sacrifice their lives for causes they may or may not support?

According to the official Congressional Record, the Department of Defense issued a statement in 1993 that stated that the mandatory conscription system could be ended  "with no effect on military mobilization and no measurable effect on the time it would take to mobilize, and no measurable effect on military recruitment."

More precisely, millions of dollars have been spent on a system that if ended, according to the nation’s own Department of Defense, would not affect the performance of the military in any significant measurable manner.

At the end of the day, there is simply is nothing to gain from having 18-year-olds invest time into signing up for a program that would only cause problems if put into action.