$30,000

The announcement that the Athletic Association will be allowed to run a deficit of $30,000 this year represents a compromise between President Conant's demand that the athletic budget be balanced and Mr. Bingham's request for a student tax or aid from the Corporation. To the prophets of disaster who believe that the day of large football gate receipts is past, the compromise will appear either as a postponement of the inevitable day of reckoning or a virtual subsidy to the H.A.A. But the outlook is by no means so gloomy as this. The time may come when college football will follow college baseball into financial oblivion, and when the University will be forced to find some other means of financing the athletic program. But for the immediate future there is reason to believe that ensuing seasons will see a substantial increase in the volume of football gate receipts. If such is the case, the wiping out of a cumulative deficit of $65,000 will be no great burden.

If President Conant has become convinced, then, that Mr. Bingham is right and that the H.A.A. really cannot balance its budget this year, he has taken the sensible way out. The CRIMSON suggested last month examples of economies which it believed would make possible the balancing of the budget even on its present reduced level, and until a full statement of the economies actually agreed upon is forthcoming, it is impossible to say whether the H.A.A. has wholly overcome the exaggerated conception of college sport which was prevalent during the flush Twenties. But the H.A.A. has made an honest effort and if, as seems likely, it would be willing to make further economies only at the expense of schedules, the compromise plan is probably the most satisfactory.