Circling the Square

Granting that Harvard is designed mainly to give a budding young intellectual or Babbitt an education, and granting furthermore that it probably does it in a pretty good way (we have no complaints anyway), the story that Harvard is impossible for someone who wants to take a crack at anything more than studies is erroneous.

There are many people who delight in commiserating with football players about what a tough life they have: "Goe whiz, Bill, you have a pretty tough life of it out for football every afternoon and then you're all fagged out so you can't study." This sense of defeatism or what have you is seeping down into the prep schools and causing a bunch of those who otherwise might come to Harvard to take a chance on some other college, not because they want to, but because, well, they're just afraid to try.

Whoever it is that's responsible for this really malicious story, or whoever they are, the idea is pretty false. With out mentioning any names, here are a few facts.

There's one boy on the squad who lives at home. Off-hand we'd say he probably got home every night about 7:30 o'clock and furthermore he has to leave at the same time in the morning if he has a 9 o'clock class. In his Freshman year he passed everything, and we don't call a "D' passing. This year the same fellow claims that he's just learned how to study, and that he's going to do better.

Then there's the case of another follow who's been out a few years. His daily stint was to make up the afternoon sport spages of a Boston paper, which meant getting in to the office every morning at 7.30 o'clock--that magic hour again. In the afternoon he wrote a couple of stories for his paper. His spare time he spent on study, but he got through all right.

We aren't trying to write a modern Horatio Alger story, but just refuting this story and incidentally filling up this space; and incidentally again, football isn't necessarily the hardest extra-curiricular activity there is. There are others that take up almost as much time and run throughout the year--publications, dramatics, P. B. H., Glee Club. These go from September to June and no great cry about the awful amount of time.

All of which just lists a few of the reasons why we aren't sympathising with some of the loyal people around here who figure Harvard football teams will never be any good because there's too much emphasis on studies. In fact, we think that Princeton is going to be walked on tomorrow: Put up or Shut up.