New Athletic Rule.

Beginning with the new year there goes into effect a new set of rules to govern athletics at Harvard. They are identical with those adopted by Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania for their annual football contest. As there is a great deal of misunderstanding with regard to them, it seems advisable to print them together with an interpretation or two. There are three rules that have an important effect on our athletics. They are as follows:

RULE I. AMATEURS.

No one shall be allowed to represent Harvard University in any public contest, either individually or as a member of any team, who, either before or after entering the University, shall have engaged for money in any athletic competition, whether for a stake or money prize, or a share of the entrance fees or admission money; or who shall have taught or engaged in any athletic exercise or sport as a means of livelihood; or who shall at any time have received for taking part in any athletic sport or contest any pecuniary emolument or gain whatever, with the single exception that he may have received from the college organization, or from any permanent amateur association of which he was at the time a member, the amount by which the expenses necessarily incurred by him in representing his organization in athletic contests exceeded his ordinary expenses.

RULE II. BONA FIDE STUDENTS.No one shall be allowed to represent Harvard University, in any public contest, either individually or as a member of team, unless he is, or intends to be throughout a college year, a bona fide member of the University, taking a full year's work.

A student who is dropped for neglect of his studies into a lower class shall be debarred from taking part in any intercollegiate contests until the end of the next academic year or until he is permitted by the faculty to rejoin his class.

No one hereafter entering the University who is not a regular student in the college or scientific school, and no regular students in either of these departments, who has ever played in any intercollegiate contest upon a class or university team of any other college, shall play upon a Harvard team until he has resided one academic year at the University and passed the annual examinations upon a full year's work.

RULE III. TIME LIMIT.No student. whenever he has represented one or more colleges, shall take part in the intercollegiate contests for more than four years; and this period shall begin with the year in which as a player upon a university team he first represented any college. In reckoning the four years, the year of probation mentioned in rule 2 shall be excluded, and also any year lost to a student by illness.

These rules will at once be recognized as an attempt at a solution of the problem of excluding professionalism in college athletics. The definition of an amateur in rule 1 was made after a careful investigation of all sides of the question. It is as complete as possible. Rule 2 contains some old rules and some that are new. The first and second clauses are simply restatements of existing restrictions. The second is the rule requiring all men who are on probation to refrain from athletic contests. The third is entirely new. Its object plainly is to prevent men from coming from other colleges for the sole purpose of engaging in athletics. It is made with a view to Rule 2, which sets a limit of four years on athletes, rather than limiting athletics to undergraduates. It seems better because it does not exclude anybody who has any legitimate reason for entering athletics.

These rules seem fully to cover the requirements. They eliminate all kinds of professionalism, exclude all but bona fide students in good standing, and minimize the chance of coming to Harvard with athletics as the primary purpose. By them six 'varsity men who are still in college and would care to go into athletics, are excluded. They are Frothingham, Upton, Abbott, Sullivan, of the nine; Fearing, of the crew and Mott Haven team; Lewis, of the eleven. Frothingham, Upton, and Fearing have been on Harvard teams four years. Abbott played on the Dartmouth nine, Sullivan and Lewis came from Amherst. The nine is badly crippled, but obviously it would be an injustice longer to delay the necessary enforcement of the rules.

Now that a start has been made, new rules of the same sort are sure to be generally adopted. They are, moreover, but the heralds of still more restrictions, that will take place on the lines of particlar sports. In football the reform has begun. It will surely take place in other athletic sports, with the final result that all athletics will be restricted. This seems to be the opinion everywhere among students and faculties.