PEACE IN THE PALAESTRA

By taking the bull by the horns and entirely removing the boxing team from the realm of intercollegiate competition, the Athletic Association has dealt in highly intelligent fashion with a situation that was rapidly becoming untenable. Faced with a schedule which presented no natural rivals and denied the stimulation of an objective match toward which to point, the boxing team was like a solitaire artist, unable to offer its wares to competition. Now that the sham responsibility of meeting incompetent and undesirable opposition has been lifted from its shoulders, the team can turn its attention to the wealth of intramural activity that lies in store.

From the start Harvard has never belonged wholeheartedly to the ranks of intercollegiate fistcuffers. When the sport was added to the schedule in 1930, after much debate internal on the part of the A.A. Hierarchy, it was given a distinct, if tacit, probationary ranking. Since its inception the course which the sport has followed has tended to increase rather than diminish, the fears of the doubting Thomases. Rivals like M.I.T. and the Coast Guard failed to provide the kind of opposition the team needed, and with Virginia the only opponent worth its salt, the inadequacy of the rest of the schedule more than justifies throwing the whole intercollegiate show overboard. And although the action of the A.A. does not appear to have been influenced by the Yale flare-up last winter, undoubtedly the final damning evidence in the minds of many is the fact that boxing has proved itself the one sport which cannot be conducted in a spirit of friendly rivalry with our brothers in New Haven.

Relieved of the burden of a worthless schedule, the members of the team can now move on to develop a greater interest in boxing within the walls of the college. For withdrawal from outside competition has no connection with the curtailment of the six other minor sports which retrenchments and economics are reducing to semi-informal level, since just as much money is to be spent in supplying coaching, equipment, and other necessaries as ever before. Thus boxing enthusiasts can look forward to an interest, and not a diminution, of facilities and interest, and a future of much promise opens out for a sport that is one of the finest and most valuable in the whole athletic repertoire.