CONFERENCE ON ATHLETICS.

The conference between a faculty committee of six and invited students to the number of twenty-four on the subject of college athletics, Friday afternoon, resulted in an interesting and suggestive discussion of the question in its various aspects as suggested by the recent course of the faculty and the faculty committee on athletics and by President Eliot's recent report. The total attendance numbered about twenty-three; the list of students invited was as follows: From '84, T. J. Coolidge, Fenn, Goodwin, LeMoyne, Lovering and Nash. '85, Atkinson, Baldwin, Carpenter, Goodale, Storrow and J. E. Thayer. '86, Adams, Barnes, Cary, Huddleston, R. D. Smith and Vogel. '87, Cabot, Higginson, Kuhn, Michael, Mumford and Schofield.

The discussion was chiefly carried on by President Eliot and Professors J. W. White and Shaler. Messrs. T. J. Coolidge, Goodwin, LeMoyne, Lovering, R. D. Smith, Vogel, Carpenter and Goodale participated in the debate on the part of the undergraduates. President Eliot in introducing the discussion stated that the meeting had been called for the purpose of securing a better common understanding on the topic named between faculty and students. The discussion would be entirely informal, and each member of the faculty present should be construed in his remarks as expressing merely his private opinion and not as committing the faculty to any course. As he had lately expressed his views in print in his annual report he would not continue with further comment. Debate then turned upon the question of professionalism in college athletics, on which subject Professors White and Shaler expressed themselves at some length. The faculty desired, it was stated, that Harvard should be on even terms with the colleges with which she competed. There were three courses open to the college. Either it should allow the present system to be stretched to its full limit and permit professionalism to gain complete sway over our sports, or it should secure the co-operation of other colleges and abolish all intercourse with professionals, or finally the college should withdraw completely from inter-collegiate contests. Prof. White expressed himself as being strongly in favor of continuing such contests. President Eliot stated that although some dozen years ago he had expressed himself in favor of such a move at present he did not wish to commit himself in favor of it. As to the first alternative, that seemed at present to be highly objectionable. The second was the measure which the faculty was striving to bring about. To effect this purpose a meeting of delegates from college faculties had recently been held in New York. A committee from that assembly would meet today when it was expected that, without doubt, all the colleges, with the possible exception of Yale, whose purpose no man could fathom, would unite in an agreement to do away with both employing professionals as trainers and playing with them in games.

A definition of the faculty's idea of the term "professional" was brought out. Men employed as trainers who did not participate in sports for money like Mr. Camp of Yale and Col. Bancroft, the faculty did not for its purposes regard as professionals.

The presence of a professional in this sense, however, on the college grounds, if a man of good character might be productive of less harm than intercourse with technical amateurs of lower character. But this did not affect the faculty's position. Their objection was to the introduction of professional methods and spirit into college sports. The two should be totally divorced. It seems for this reason that the faculty objected to employing for temporary periods any professional trainer. If such a trainer, however, had renounced the pursuit of his profession he would no longer be considered a professional within the faculty's meaning, and such a one could be employed by the college.

President Eliot was opposed to the practice indulged in by college teams of depending largely upon the receipts from gate-money for paying their expenses. He thought that a small charge for seats at games might be made, but the privilege of viewing the game should be perfectly free both to students and to outsiders. He was strongly opposed to a fence around the new grounds and regretted that the circle of benches now on Jarvis shut off so large a part of the grounds from public view. What resource in default of this customary one there would remain to pay the expenses of intercollegiate contests, the discussion did not bring to light.

The only marked diversity of opinion between students and professors as expressed at this meeting seemed to be as to the possibility of pursuing any middle course under the present system. President Eliot and Professor White seemed to consider such a course quite impossible. Mr. Coolidge and others argued that by a judicious oversight by the faculty committee and by using extreme care in employing professionals as trainers no element of professionalism need be introduced into our sports. The excess of college athletics could easily be checked, and things reduced to the basis of the time not long passed, when the present crusade against professionalism was unheard of. The objection of the faculty, it was urged in reply, was to professionalism in toto. Toleration of it in a modified form even was as bad almost as its most aggravated development as now illustrated at Yale, and the experience of the England Universities in recent years would teach us that nothing less than a total abolition of all connection with the professional and sporting world, with lines sharply defined, would serve as a remedy.