REWARD OF MERIT

With the recent vote of the Athletic Council of the University of Illinois that henceforth all sports at that university are to be "major" sports, the much discussed problem of the place of athletics in the college curriculum takes a new and interesting turn. In September of this year the regulation will become active, and from then on major letters will be awarded to the members of all athletic teams at Illinois. The decision was reached after consultation with the minor sport captains, the opinion of the majority inclining apparently toward the view that to award major insignia for all branches of athletics will create a wider interest in the sports now classed as "minor."

This argument and others that were advanced, to the effect that if a high standard of excellence be demanded from minor sport athletes as well as from participants in major sports, recognition should be equal in all cases, leave it in doubt as to whether the athletic letter is to be regarded more appropriately as a reward of excellence or as a sort of bribe held out to tempt the hesitating into action. Obviously if it serves in the first capacity it is effective in the second also, but obviously the first is the fundamental one for unless the letter is recognized as a valuable reward it will have no value as an incentive.

But it is the general esteem in which an athletic letter is held that determines its relative value. A "major" sport is such only because it represents a major interest, and a "minor" sport likewise. It seems illogical to expect that to call a letter "major" will make it valuable. It seem rather that to make all sports and insignia major as has been done at Illinois will only take the force away from the term and leave the attitude pretty much as before.