The Ticket Mess

A few weeks ago, a student football manager was caught scalping tickets. Informed of the charge, his immediate superior said "the implications made regarding the football community are absurd and not worthy. of comment." This statement reminded the University that the students and officials who devote their time to the Harvard football team form a close-knit community with a long and proud tradition. But insofar as it implied this case was unique, the retort was dead wrong. In the last two days it has become unmistakably clear that there is something rotten in the "football community."

These are the facts football players, managers, and other members of the "football community" have been selling their "complimentary" tickets, thus violating the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The officials in charge of selling tickets on the open market have given preference to members of final clubs, thus giving senior seats to juniors, and establishing a standard of social acceptability above which one no longer has to wait in line.

The first is the most apalling. For when the buying and selling of "complimentary" seats is a systematized as it has been, a football player might just as well be receiving a weekly salary. As commercial as free books or automobiles donated by alumni, such brokerage taints the supposed purity of Harvard football. Insofar as the University allows this practice to flourish, it is subverting the progress it has made along other lines to keep Harvard football an amateur sport.

It is unfortunate that both selling and preference were allowed to continue until they had spawned bad publicity for the University. The officials in charge of University relations with clubs and ticket purchasers should have known about and should have stopped both practices. But if this shows official negligence, it can easily be corrected by prompt action. No one has to make public the names of all the players who profited from free tickets. Nor should they be denied free passes, if they give them to family or friends, for they certainly earn them. But the Faculty Committee on Athletics should recommend to the Administrative Board that anyone who sells his "complimentary" tickets in the future should be expelled from College. And to stop favoritism on the ticket line, the mail-order system of ticket assignment should be approved and rigidly administered next season.

It has been said that these scandals should have been hushed, lest they impair the football community's morale for the Yale game. The real danger lies in secrecy, for in secrecy commercialized attitudes and practices could persist and grow into bigger, more damaging scandals. We believe the football community is true enough to its traditions to cleanse itself of these attitudes and practices without any effect on its morale. It needs only a pressure from the Administration and the other students to do so quickly. There can be no sanction to any student making a profit out of Harvard football.