The Graduate View

The following editorial was printed last year in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. It is reprinted now by the CRIMSON to present to undergraduates the attitude of graduates on subway rioting.

Subway rioting after hockey games in Boston is a form of indoor athletics that is greatly "over-emphasized." In this case the Bulletin does not favor "giving the game back to the boys," but hopes to see it abolished altogether--if possible, by the boys themselves, if not, then by the authorities. Hitherto this species of misconduct has been dealt with leniently by both sets of authorities. It is a difficult matter for the police to handle because it is never clear who is primarily responsible. When the police descend, they descend upon the just and the unjust alike. The University authorities would prefer to assume that Harvard undergraduates are adults, and can be frusted to go to Boston and return without the company of nurses or attendants. Harvard undergraduates have, in effect, asked to be so treated. They are supposed in these modern days to dapise that crude "collegiatism" which makes itself blatantly conspicuous and asks for the special indulgence which is ordinarily accorded to children. But if undergraduates do not wish to be treated like school-boys they must not behave like school-boys. If paternalistic supervision is to be withheld, there is an implied obligation on the party of the second part to hold himself superior to it.

This is a matter, in short, in which it ought to be possible for undergraduate opinion to exercise control. The CRIMSON and the Student Council are to be congratulated on having registered a prompt and emphatic protest after the most recent of these disturbances. It is not to be assumed that the majority of the students approve them any more than do the innocent victims who are exercising their right to ride in public conveyances and are not to be blamed for forming the impression that Harvard is a school of rowdyism.

Subway trains are not a part of the athletic plant of Harvard. There are abundant facilities designed to enable the adolescent youth to work off his surplus energy without injury either to the convenience of the public or to the good name of the University. --Alumni Bulletin. February 26, 1931.