Alumni Advice on Athletics.

It is of interest to note what is being done by our athletes, as necessitated by the recent action of Yale toward restricting the membership of college athletic teams to students in the undergraduate departments of the various universities. Before making any move in the matter the Harvard Advisory Athletic Committee has decided to make as thorough a canvas of the alumni as possible. In a letter which Perry Trafford has just sent to a member of the New York alumni, he makes the following statements. It is probable, however, that the University plan which he speaks of will be modified in certain directions not involving any change of principle.

"It has long been evident that for the sake of pure athletics the class of men who are eligible for the athletic teams which represent the colleges and universities should in some manner be regulated and restricted. The powerful evils of the present system may be said to be:

1. That athletes may not be bona-fide students. 2. That athletes may go on playing for any number of years. 3. That athletes in one college may be hired to go to another college and play on the teams of the latter.

At a recent meeting of the Intercollegiate Foot Ball Association runs were adopted (Yale, Princeton and Wesleyan voting against University of Pennsylvania determining how the foot ball teams represented in that association shall be made up. The same rules will unquestionably govern the base ball games, and perhaps all sports between the above named colleges.

Harvard, of course, was not represented at that meeting, but it will be necessary very soon for Harvard to take some decided stand on the important question which was then passed upon. The main points of the rules thus adopted (which are substantially the same which Harvard proposed and urged in vain several years ago) are as follows:

College plan - 1. Only students of a college university, who are candidates for the degree of A. B. or B. S., shall play on any team. 2. No student of any college or university who has ever matriculated at any other college shall play on any team.

Another plan has been suggested, the main points of which are these:

University plan. - All students of a college or university in good standing shall be eligible to play on any athletic team except: 1. Students who have already played for three years (or, in the case of men getting on the team in their freshman years, four years) on their college or university team. 2. Students who at some previous time have been connected with the college team or a class team of another college."