BRASS TACKS

The recommendation yesterday that basketball be made a major sport and the publication of a report on inter-house athletics this morning indicate that at last one of the College's many representative committees has come awake and thoroughly comprehends the position of athletics in the life of the average undergraduate. The report although brief and factual to a degree which prevents the casual reader from readily understanding the heavy work and the slowly-maturing sports philosophy which lies behind it rings the gong. It shows the best line of attack on the old problem of mens sana in corpore sano--still a very real one for all the bilge that has been said and written about it.

The H.A.A., University Hall, and the House Masters should make every effort to put its recommendations into effect by next fall. Indifference and financial drawbacks are the only enemies to this logical development of intramural athletics. Both can be overcome with the assistance of the Masters and the H.A.A., although it is true that a donor must be found if the system is to be brought to the perfection which it has attained at Yale. Even the daring step of a compulsory athletic fee, recommended by the Council, and the support of paid managers from the temporary student employment fund will not provide sufficient revenue. It seems doubtful whether the Houses will be able to scrape the pot for much more cash, but where there's a will, there's a way. The report indicates that the will exists, and the Council rightly leaves it to the administration to provide the way.

In recommending the compulsory athletic fee the Council laid plank number two in the bridge that will lead Harvard over the deep and horrid chasm in whose gloomy depths so many other colleges lie groaning. President Conant's demand for an endowment fund started the bridge from one side and the Council has laid the foundations from the other--only by a strong intra-mural program, self-sufficing and self-supporting, can athletics be rigorously bent to meet the needs of every student and the chasm successfully avoided.

Next step at Harvard is for the H.A.A. to junk the farcical student control which the so-called "representative" athletic committees now fail to provide and set up some system whereby athletics can be made to serve all students, Varsity and non-varsity alike. With everyone paying ten dollars, an active voice which can be heard is only fair. One of the most obvious methods by which this can be achieved is indicated by the system of student managers, broad participation, and consequent undergraduate control which have been so successful at Yale. Only by the adoption of the Council's recommendations can the gargantuan aspects be brought under control, while at the same time its appeal for every man is developed and "athletics for all" made a reality rather than a pious hope.