PENNYPACKER ASSERTS GRADUATE ATHLETIC COACHES ARE PREFERABLE, NOT NECESSARY

The report of the Harvard Athletic Committee which was submitted a few weeks ago to the President and Fellows of the College, and which was printed in part in the CRIMSON of October 23, has been commented on considerably in the editorial columns of the eastern press. The Alumni Bulletin is the latest journal in this field. In the issue of November 5, the graduate publication says editorially:

"The Harvard Athletic Committee said in the report submitted a few weeks ago to the President and Fellows: 'Your committee would like to restrict all coaching for every intercollegiate sport to the graduates of the University.' Why?

Bulletin Questions Policy

"We realize that the sentence here quoted from the report of the Athletic Committee is the product of a state of mind which seems to be in vogue just not. Even the newspapers commend it. For instance, the New York Times says in approval: 'This certainly is a movement in the right direction.' But as a matter of fact, is it?

"If anybody will take the trouble to look through the first few pages of the Harvard University Catalogue he will find in the list of the members of the Faculty the names of many who are not graduates of the University. One of the Overseers now serving the College is not a graduate of Harvard, and this has been so in other years. Not very long ago a man who had never attended any college was asked to become a member of the Corporation, but declined. If it is proper and wise to choose for the Faculty and the governing boards persons who do not have a Harvard degree, what is the justification, either in theory or in practice, for insisting that an athletic coach must be a Harvard graduate?"

Henry Pennypacker '88. Chairman of the Committee on the Regulation of Athletics, the committee that framed the report, when interviewed, explained the particular passage that has caused so much comment.

"As I understand it," Mr. Pennypacker told a CRIMSON reporter last night, "the attitude of the Committee was that a graduate should be appointed coach only if he was better than anyone else that could be secured. If we can find a coach who is better than any graduate, we would take him. The report says that the Committee would 'like' to restrict all coaches to graduates, but should the Committee be able to find a non-graduate who was eminently suited to the job, it would have to forego its liking and secure the better man.

Committee Upholds Pennypacker

"Of course this statement is just an expression of my own views, but it seems to me that this is also the view held by the rest of the Committee."

Another port of this report has been subjected to editorial comment in the Metropolitan press.

In the Transcript of last night, the following quotation is made from this same report: "College sports should not be so many, nor made so important, as to divert the thoughts, interests, and enthusiasms of the players from the major academic purpose for which they went to Harvard. They should not be inaugurated or maintained for the purpose of entertaining the public or the graduates."

It is interesting to compare this view with the opinion on college athletics held by Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, former president of Amherst. In his book, "Freedom and the College," published in 1922, Dr. Meiklejohn says in the chapter on "What Are College Games For?":

Victories Foster Studies

"Victories are supposed to win for the college the favor of men who without them would be indifferent or antagonistic. To put it quite bluntly, the college needs the favor and support of men who are not sufficiently interested in its essential values to care for it because of these. It therefore makes appeal to them on other grounds. It hopes that in the fact that one football team has beaten another they will find reason for endowing the scholarship with which the first team is 'connected.' It offers an insult to their intelligence as an appeal to their favor.

"There are two groups of men to whom this appeal is especially made, the 'public' and the 'athletic' alumni.' In the first case, it is hoped that the new of the winning games will make a good impression upon people who do not know the college in other ways. In this sense winning teams are 'good advertising.' It is believed that wherever the news of victory goes, 'boys' will be attracted to the college, their friends will be impressed by its strength, and so the numbers and the prestige of the institution will be increased.

"College is an Athletic Club"

"The appeal to the 'athletic alumni' is very similar. These men are the graduates and non-graduates of the college who value athletic victories very highly . . . For these men a college is an athletic club with certain other very irritating appendages. But the greater number of the group are not so dull as this. They commonly believe, first, that victories give 'good advertising,' and second, that victories indicate better than anything else the quality of the undergraduate life, and even of the college instruction and administration. For lack of other standards, they judge the college by this, with which they are familiar."