Ivy League Defies ECAC On Freshman Eligibility

Freshmen outside the Ivy Group will be eligible for varsity competition in Eastern colleges, the Eastern College Athletic Conference announced yesterday.

The loosening up on participation rules will be in force only until June, 1952, Asa S. Bushnell, president of the E.C.A.C., stated. He added that his group took the step because it "anticipated" enrollment shrinkages in the current national emergency."

William J. Bingham '16, Director of Athletics, said last night that the University Administration had instructed him to vote against freshman eligibility when deans or other representatives of Ivy colleges met last month to take a stand on he issue. He stuck to the policy in a mail vote the E.C.A.C. took of its 91 member colleges.

At that meeting, the eight Ivy schools--Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia, Cornell, and Pennsylvania--decided they would not permit freshmen to play on varsities no matter what the other colleges did.

Bingham said the Crimson's experience with freshmen eligibility in 1942 had been "disastrous." "Many students," he explained, "flunked out because of the pressure of varsity practices."

The Ivy Group's separate policy might be a disadvantage to its members, Bingham said, because non-Ivy opposition would have the advantage of good athletes as soon as they entered college. "But," he added, "You don't have to schedule teams that you think will put you at a severe disadvantage because of their policy about freshman participation." The problem, he said, would mostly come up in connection with football.

Representatives of the Ivy Group will reconsider their eligibility policies before the end of the month, Bingham said, "but it's doubtful that there will be a change."

The Big Ten and four other conferences already have freshman eligibility.

Before this latest action, the E.C.A.C. permitted colleges with male enrollments under 1,000 or with fewer than 650 in the senior, junior, and sophomore classes to use freshmen on varsities.