STUDENTS VERSUS FACULTY.

A recent number of the Spirit of the Times contrasts the present attitude of students and of college faculties in regard to the present reform in athletics, again emphasizing in accordance with President Eliot's views the irreconcilable antithesis between the new system and the old. In the belief that this article represents with substantial accuracy the position of the authorities of Harvard College in the matter, and as such deserves the widest circulation, we present it in full below. We still hold that the antithesis spoken of is unduly emphasized and need not necessarily exist, in spite of the Spirit's arguments to the contrary. But to prolong this controversy seems to us at present unprofitable. We need only further remark that we consider the Spirit's dismal prophecy of a "conflict" between faculty and students as unwarranted. The article reads:

"President Eliot, of Harvard College, in his recent annual report, makes some statements concerning athletic sports, which we publish on another page, and which should be read and remembered by every student. He is the first man who has plainly and publicly pointed out what keen observers have long known, viz., that students and professors look at athletics from totally different standpoints; that these two views are wholly irreconcilable; that between them is a chasm which affords no tenable middle ground; that the students are unwisely stubborn in support of their own ideas; and that this obstinacy will, sooner or later; drive the strong arm of authority to attain, by harsh action, what might have been effected by timely concession and compromise.

The faculty consider athletic culture a necessary part of thorough education, and wish to treat it as earnest study, not idle pastime; as a duty instead of a diversion. As regards individual training, they wish each incoming student to be weighed, measured, examined and tested by an expert professor, who will carefully take note of each lad's physical peculiarities, and prescribe for him a course of systematic exercise, so devised and arranged as to accelerate slow growth, strengthen weak organs, cultivate neglected muscles, and gradually educate and train each individual into a man, physically sound, healthy, well-balanced, and evenly developed.

The student's theory of individual training is entirely different. He chooses men who give promise as oarsmen, and limits their exercise to rowing, until they have the oarsman's round-shouldered stoop, and lean arm, and are fit for nothing else. He selects lads with strong legs and slight upper works, and keeps them at running or football kicking until they have the legs of Hercules under the arms and chest of a school girl. He picks out boys with strong arms and full chests, but slim legs, and puts them at dumbbells, or rings, or bars, or ladders, until they are Sampsons above, grafted upon pigmies below. Probably one tenth of the students are thus selected for transformation into illy-balanced, unevenly developed specialties, looking something like the grotesque and abnormal figures seen on Chinese fans, while the remaining nine-tenths are totally neglected, allowed to loaf if they please, work if they please-possibly to receive permanent injuries from injudiciously selected and recklessly executed exercises.

As to inter-collegiate athletic contests the faculty wish to have them done "decently and in order;" to be managed in such manner as not to interfere materially with the more serious duties of the student, or greatly disturb the ordinarily placid routine of undergraduate life; to make them incidents, not epochs, in college history; to limit their preliminary training within reasonable bounds as to expenditure, either of time or money; to totally abandon the employment of professional trainers or assistants; to avoid undue notoriety and its attendant unhealthy excitement; to forswear all gate-money speculation-in short, to conduct these contests strictly in accordance with the true spirit of genuine amateur sport.

As with individual athletic culture so with inter-collegiate contests; the student holds opinions about them differing diametrically from those of the faculty. He wishes to employ professional trainers; to arrange trial contests with the most formidable opponents, amateur or professional; to bring antagonists from afar; and to provide the necessary funds by holding the contest in cities remote and inconvenient, but whose residents are more liberal with gate-money than would be the home assemblies. He wishes to make these contests the event of the college year, and to subordinate to them study and examinations-anything and everything. He wishes to give these affairs world wide notoriety; to have the insignificant details of each day's preliminary practice published in the newspapers of Christendom, and to have a nation watch and wait the result. In case of victory he wishes to immediately "Paint the town red," and whether winner or loser he assists and encourages the contestants to celebrate their release from the wholesome restraints of training by a round of riotous excess, which does more physical harm than a decade of training, or a hundred hard races.

If students have any worldly wisdom, they will take warning in time, and at once materially modify both the theory and practice of their conduct of athletic sports; for, if radical reforms are not speedily effected, there must ensue a conflict in which it is not hard to prophesy which side will be driven to the wall.