Crimson Letter Day

Like a wealthy old widow, Harvard's oft-criticized and much-badgered Athletic Association hates to change the policies of its younger days. Cajoled by the alumni and wrapped up in hoary tradition, the rulemakers for Crimson sports have for decades perpetuated a faulty system of letter awards. Down at Quincy Street everybody agrees the system is imperfect; some even term it an anachronism.

To win a letter in a Harvard sport an athlete must do exactly one thing--play for an instant against Yale. Back in the days when Harvard and Yale were the kingpins of the college world, this was the logical arrangement. But in 1947 although the Yale game is still the climax of the season, it is no longer more important than the sum of the other games despite earnest dreams of ancient athletes.

The iron-clad Yale game rule burdens the coaching staffs in the key game of the year with the knowledge that they must play all the men who rate awards. "If the score had been 21 to 21," Dick Harlow said after the last Yale game, "I'm afraid a lot of kids wouldn't have gotten their letters." Injured men patently cannot play in a game, Yale or otherwise, and there have been cases in the past where a man got an early season broken leg instead of an "H."

In some sports, like wrestling, the rule works unfair restrictions. Since only eight men can wrestle against Yale, from a squad of 50 or more, the coach can give only eight men awards. Meanwhile a soccer squad of similar size gives some 22 letters a season.

The rule of no play against Yale, no letter, can be circumvented only if the coach, the Undergraduate Athletic Committee, H.A.A. officials, and the Committee on the Regulation of Athletic Sports agree that a man should get an "H." This does not correct more than isolated injustices, for these groups agree about as often as the U.N. Security Council.

In some colleges a definite number of minutes of playing time is the basis for letter awards, but, like the present Harvard-Yale system, it wrongs the injured and the low men on the squad. In essence, there can be but one criterion for deciding which men shall be awarded letters: the coach's judgment. To make him ratify his opinion by playing all his choices in one specific game is an artificial and outdated canon.