Rushing to PT

When the University started compulsory Physical training for freshmen in 1919, many faculty members and students-reared under the elective system-shook their heads over the loss of "Harvard's tradition of personal liberty." Thirty-five years later, in the era of General Education A and distribution requirements, few would attack compulsory physical exercise on the same grounds. Many can and should criticize it for the time it needlessly carves from the freshman's already over-crowded day. The job-holding student especially-usually required to maintain a Group IV average and participate in an activity to retain a scholarship-should not have three of his afternoons each week sliced in half by exercise periods.

The three short hours required by the rule book are deceptive. After a student has showered, dressed, and walked to and from exercise, he has often spent twice that time. Even if some training were necessary for freshmen, as the program's directors argue, "three" has never been proved the magic number for attaining physical fitness. Actually, for the man with a job, the excretes may be more harmful than beneficial if it requires him to make up time lost in afternoon exercise by sleeping less at night. If University officials are concerned about the physical condition of under-par freshmen, they should still assign the 300 students who annually fail the step-test to a special course, and give more emphasis to the intra-mural program for the rest. The time problem has occasionally been recognized elsewhere. Team managers, who rarely do much exercising, are excused from physical training. In past years, freshmen working for PBH in settlement houses were not required to exercise. Why, then, is there no provision for the working student?

It is hardly likely that freshmen would avoid Dillon Field House and the Indoor Athletic building if the requirement were withdrawn. Over 60 percent of upperclassmen participate in some form of House athletics and an additional ten to fifteen errant exercise regularly-quite voluntarily. Neither the athletic program not freshman health, then, would suffer if the requirements were withdrawn entirely. At least for men holding term-time jobs, an exemption or requirement reduction in physical training is both well deserved and needed.