Fast and Loose

The gathering tide of undergraduate disapproval of the H.A.A., temporarily slowed by the Student Council sop earlier in the fall, burst into an angry flood yesterday morning. Everywhere, students were agreed that the H.A.A. stood convicted not only of playing fast and loose with the undergraduate body, but of an almost criminal inefficiency.

Yesterday, a scant five days before the game, the H.A.A. casually destroyed the plans of thousands who had invited their families and other guests to attend Harvard's most important athletic event of the year. By placing their applications a month to two months in advance, those thousands were acting in good faith with the H.A.A. That faith was not reciprocated. It was not reciprocated out of any malevolent intention on the part of the Athletic Association, but only out of stupidity. For if the H.A.A. lacked the intelligence to realize that every major collegiate football game since the beginning of the fall has been a near or a complete sell-out, and acted accordingly by limiting ticket applications at the outset, then they should have announced the ticket ration as soon as it became apparent that the game was to be a sell-out. Instead, the H.A.A. chose to wait until the very eve of the game.

The culpability of the Athletic Association in the lateness of their announcement is compounded by their mismanagement of the allotment of tickets to the several classes. After sweating out the interminable lines in front of the Quincy Street office, several men found that although their ticket applications had been before the deadline, not even one extra ticket had been assigned them. And the number of men, particularly in the class of '45 and the class of '46, who have been assigned seats in or teetering on the edge of the end zones are too numerous to mention.

It is patently too late to repair the damage that has been done--the horse is long gone from the barn. But it is not too late to insure that such a situation never again arises at Harvard. Whether it is salutary or not, football at Harvard, as throughout the nation, stands on the threshold of its greatest era. But if football at Harvard is to be big time, then the H.A.A. must sweep off the cobwebs and emerge from the nineteenth century.