Playing Cards

Even on the calmest day, a continual wind sweeps across the flat expanse of Soldiers Field. It dashes through the unprotected tennis courts, transforming drop shots, into smashes and smashes into drop shots. And the H.A.A. does not plant hedges or put canvas screens around the courts because intramural athletics cannot even pay its own way, let alone provide money for improving facilities.

There are several possible solutions to the problem of intramural funds. One is to raise the price of participation tickets, but this would be just one more step in making education more expensive. Another would be to make the tickets compulsory for all undergraduates, as they now are for freshmen, but this would probably put an extra tariff on those students who can least afford a hike in expenses.

The third possibility is to plug up the opening through which many students are now using the athletic facilities without paying anything. These enterprises borrow their friends' and roommates' cards, sign their friends' and roommates' names, and play on their friends' and roommates' facilities.

These people can be stopped simply by putting pictures of participants on participation tickets. There would be nothing more uncomfortable than facing a ferocious name-taker who was looking malevolently from the picture on the card to the culprit's face. Revenues would be bolstered, the H.A.A. deficit would be out, and there would be a chance of playing some windless tennis.