TO IMPROVE OR DESTROY?

The current issue of the Atlantic Monthly contains an article by William T. Foster '01, president of Reed College, advocating the abolition of intercollegiate athletics. President Foster attacks the present system on the score that it provides training for the few who need it least; he favors a system of interclass and group athletics only. But Harvard's athletics, certainly, are not conducted for the few. True all can not play on the first team; but there are constant calls for men for the minor sports; there are scrub football, hockey, and baseball games, club crews, handicap track meets, as well as excellent facilities for playing tennis. If then, games like the Haughton Cup series, are abandoned for lack of men, the system should hardly be condemned for failure to furnish opportunities. And there is no reason to believe that such a regime as president Foster advocates, would attract more, if as many men. With football played only between classes and groups, there would be no more incentive to play than there is in the present class or scrub games. Moreover there would be lacking the strongest present incentive--the chance to make a University team.

Are the attendant evils sufficient to warrant the abolition of the system? There is undoubtedly much truth in the attack upon the athlete who is paid to come to college. But such cases are not the rule, and they are becoming fewer every year.

As to the effect upon the students, it is claimed that the undergraduate's point of view is distorted and that intercollegiate athletics play too large a part in his thoughts and conversation. The author thinks the ten pages devoted to athletics in "Harvard of Today," the Territorial Club's booklet, shows a too great interest in athletics. Perhaps it does, and undoubtedly conversation during football season runs largely to football, but there are many worse things than football to talk about.

There is little, if any, of the college rowdyism, or "rah rah" spirit at Harvard. And for the majority an intercollegiate football game means something more than an opportunity to give vent to "canned enthusiasm" by wild cheers and drunkenness. It is a clean contest, well and fairly fought, an exhibition of skill, grit, loyalty and team-work, that leaves the spectator with an increased desire to attain those qualities for himself.