THE MAIL

Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer, will names be withheld. Only letters under 400 words can be printed because of space limitations.)

To the Editor of the Crimson:

May I suggest that the course that you advocate, like the tyranny of Apollinaris, can lead only to the exploitation of the true student by those who have no finer sensibilities. The narrow and bigoted point of view that you maintain comes as a surprise to one who has always placed Harvard's intellectual preeminence above all other considerations. Is it not obvious that, at least to thinking people, in some small part the fame of the university is due to the non-athletic portion of the community? Not only must we witness the coarsening of the intellectual fibres of "college" men by the iron heel of crude commercialism, but you have the unmitigated presumption to suggest that we contribute to it. There is no middle road. Either the university must accept as inevitable the domination of an athletic hierarchy, or reassert its long dormant spirit of open minded tolerance.

Consider the case of the man to whom hours spent in Widener seem more profitable than those passed in using the claborate equipment of the Indoor Athletic Building. Must he be taxed for the upkeep of facilities which he may never use? If a solution to the problem of support must be found, is it not far better to return to the former system of larger individual contributions by those participating in the athletic program, rather than subjecting the entire student body to the naive bureaucracy of the H. A. A. Ripley O. Jones '38