Yale Club Official Calls Eligibility Ruling Unfair

The Chairman of the Enrollments and Scholarships Committee of the Yale Club of Chicago last night sharply criticized the Ivy League Eligibility Committee's ineligibility ruling on a Yale freshman last fall.

John T. Robinson, head of the group which reviews all applications to Yale from the Chicago area, went on to tell the CRIMSON he knew and approved in advance of the subsidization plan which sent the student through an additional year of secondary school training before be went on to Yale.

"I do not like to see a fine boy pilloried to prove the vigilance of the Ivy League Eligibility Committee," he said. If the Committee was going to act on the student it should have done so before school began this fall, he argued.

Robinson also said that he had not learned of the Ivy rule forbidding subsidization of a student's secondary school education until the spring of 1954 after the student involved had completed half of his additional year at Cheshire School in Cheshire, Conn. He said the boy never felt he was acting incorrectly.

Chose Yale Freely

Following his year at Cheshire, which was partially paid for by a group of Yale alumni; the student went on to New Haven entirely on his own volition, Robinson said. It was after his matriculation last fall that the former standout halfback for his Chicago high school was declared ineligible for intercollegiate athletic competition by the Ivy Committee.

The Yale alumnus attacked the Committee both for not ruling on the boy before he began his year in New Haven, and for later publicizing its decision through the alumni magazines of the Ivy League.

He repeatedly emphasized that the motivation in helping finance the year of secondary education of the student was entirely educational, to give the boy a chance at an Ivy League education.

"There was absolutely no arm twisting involved," he explained last night. "Nobody said he had to go to Yale, although we naturally hoped he would. When he was originally interviewed by the Scholarship Committee in Chicago the report did not emphasize his athletic ability but that here was a boy who primarily wanted an Ivy education."

Refused Scholarships

Robinson pointed out that the student had received athletic scholarship offers from several mid-western colleges, including Notre Dame, but had not accepted them "because he wanted to go to Yale."

"If he had wished to be an All-American," Robinson continued, "he would not have picked Yale. He's a hell of a good halfback, who could have gone to some pretty good universities two years ago," he said.

"The very fact that he also applied to Harvard and was interviewed should mean something. He's had a raw deal. And why they went and put the decision in every alumni magazine is beyond me," the Yale Club official added.

The student has been under eligibility suspension over since the Committee met in October, and will remain so until the group reviews his case again. He has only played intramural athletics at Yale.