SINNING IN SECRET

The current issue of the Alumni Bulletin carries a letter from the captain of the University crew inviting all interested graduates to follow the practice of the squad from a launch to be reserved for their use. Hitherto, former members of the varsity boat have been welcomed at the crew house and arrangements made for their presence in one of the coaching launches, but the present invitation to all alumni of whatever description is an unusually thoughtful courtesy. It should do much to nourish the atmosphere of amateurism and friendly sportsmanship which has always been more noticable in rowing than any of the other college athletic activities.

The forbidding cordon of assistant managers which surround the football practice field has long been a source of irritation to undergraduates and alumni alike. The splendid isolation in which the football men work out prevents any free and easy familiarity with the team and rightly or wrongly heightens the atmosphere of cold commercialism which hangs always so heavily over the gridiron. One can't even drop in to see how one's roommate is coming along, and a graduate in Cambridge for a day or two has as little chance of seeing how one of the boys from home looks on the gridiron as he has of observing Achilles among the shades. Of course if he waits till Saturday, pays the proper amount of money, and has remembered his field glasses, he can catch a glimpse or two, but by that time what the British refer to as the "funsomeness" of the sport has departed.

It is small comfort to be told that the intensity of competition demands that these consultations with the muse, or fury, of football be held in solitude. And insult is added to injury by the honeyed information that on the Thursday before the Yale game the team will run through signals before the public eye. It is but a hollow victory when one's champion upon the field of battle loses all human interest behind a mask of secret practice.

The time would seem ripe for some new gentlemen's agreement which would bring to Harvard and her major competitors an equal share in the disadvantages of a certain proportion of public practice sessions. With all parties starting thus from scratch, no one could pipe up and point to defeats as the result of too few secret practices; and the team might regain some of that organic unity with the student and alumni, the loss of which has lead to the recent plaintive whining about lack of vocal support.