SPORTS SLASH

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In your editorial "Sports on the Cuff," you mentioned that the Harvard Athletic Association had dropped lacrosse as a Varsity sport and that the object of this move was to make athletics, in general, self-supporting through endowment earnings.

Lacrosse was not dropped as a Varsity sport by the Dept. of Athletics. It was removed from budgetary support. This means that the team is expected to retain its position in the Ivy League and Cox Division of the Eastern Lacrosse Association without transportation or equipment aid. The Faculty committee on Athletics announced this decision last June at a time when most of the college had adjourned for vacation. As a result, few people were around to exert any disagreement with this action.

Later in June, a group of Harvard lacrosse players wrote a letter to the alumni who had participated in the sport, informing them of the situation. President Pusey and Athletic Director Bolles received over two hundred letters of protestation, demanding explanation.

The H.A.A. stuck to its original statement that rising costs of labor and material had necessitated slashes in team budgets and that lacrosse had been one of the sports in which cuts could be made without fear of recriminations. It has not explained, however, why a sport, one of the oldest played at the college, was abandoned when its budget was less than ten per cent of the expected saving and an infinitesimally smaller per cent of the total athletic budget.

This year, because of its "club" status, the lacrosse team attempted to create a capital fund to endow the sport. Permission was refused this past fall because the University felt that an organization of friends of Harvard lacrosse would severely hinder ifts to the $82.5 million drive, creating, according to James Reynolds, "a fund within a fund."

From these reversals comes the present position of Harvard lacrosse. With a schedule of three home and ten away games, including trips to Dartmouth, Cornell, and Princeton, the main financial burden has fallen upon the players themselves. Is it not a strange irony that Harvard, the most heavily endowed college in the United States, forces one of its Varsity sports to be supported by the undergraduates themselves.

The team of 1959 hopes that it may be reinstated. Its spirit and interest in the game has been higher than in past years and its members are eager to prove to the college that they can uphold the traditions and respect of Harvard. All they ask is that they be given an equal opportunity to do so.

Charles Devens, Jr. '59.