"The Blind Lead The Blind"

"Surely, as the aim in instruction is to give education to all, that in athletics should be the physical culture of all," President Lowell said a few days ago when he announced the Harvard sports policy. He further stated that "to devote attention almost wholly to inter-collegiate teams is no more justified than to devote attention almost exclusively to high scholars with comparatively little care for their student body..."

Of the problems that Mr. Lowell points out as facing the athletic board, two are of prime importance,--the overemphasis of first-team games in the minds of undergraduates and the recent lack of interest in inter-mural sports. The latter question has been settled at Harvard for the time being by the rise of class athletics, similar to those at Yale, and the innovation of inter-dormitory games. But Mr. Lowell passes over the first problem--that of over-emphasis--with the following laconic reference (specifically to the practice of having inter collegiate games every Saturday of the autumn)--"It tends to disturb seriously the work of education..." This is one of the numerous faults that the new sports policy is supposed to remedy.

But a consideration of the reform proposed to meet this problem will show that effective provision has not been made. The plan is to play the same teams every two or three years but no team, with the exception of Yale, two years in succession. This step is intended to remove the spirit of competition from the game and hence diminish the emphasis on victory. Such step, how ever, would only increase the number of rivals and make the competition keener and more prolonged. The desire to retrieve lost laurels would be the stronger for waiting two or three years instead of one.

The disadvantages seem to make it hardly worth the experiment. The inconvenience that the Harvard ruling would bring to the managers of teams of other colleges--until those colleges accept, of necessity, the Harvard athletic policy in place of their own--should have some weight with the Harvard Committee on Athletics. It is natural that a manager should be reluctant to sign a contract that would leave a hole in his next year's schedule. But this they may say, is only a detail.

What, then, is the net outcome of the publicity that the new Harvard athletic policy has received? A plea has been made for a return to the former spirit of sportsmanship in American athletics, and an example such as it is, has been set for other colleges to follow. It is an ideal worth striving for, but the President's program is as impractical as was the Harvard Crimson's proposal in 1925 when the editors sought to diminish the number of games and remove all big rivals other than Yale from the Harvard schedule. --Yale Daily News