To Preserve the Winter Sports.

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Our Athletic Committee has approved a long baseball schedule and the usual football schedule, but when it comes to the question of preserving intercollegiate contests, they consider the advisability of eliminating the minor sports in that respect. Is it the desire of the Faculty that, contrary to their former broad principles, they wish to confine interest in athletics to a few sports? Is this not a narrow, selfish policy? Perhaps they believe that the club system will develop and the interest will continue in that form. But you cannot expect this to happen by quick action; it takes a long time for it to develop and it can only be done by gradually working the one out of the other. The main interest that draws men to these sports in the winter is the prospect of the intercollegiate games. The sports are new and they require stimulus. Hence they will cut short the only interest of the undergraduate life at that dull time of the year, and all the men who go out for hockey and basketball, most of whom do not partake in the major sports, will spend their time idly indoors. Is this what the Faculty desires? Then, too, is it not unfair to the men who have devoted their time to the building up of these sports and the encouraging of the scrub series, that their efforts should be spoiled?

It is natural that the minor sports, being the less important, should suffer, but this could more fairly have been done by restricting the number of their contests. CHAS. W. SHORT, JR., '08.