Ad Board Says No to Crew, Team Can't Go to Cairo Fete

It appears that Harvard will not be sending a heavyweight crew team to Egypt this year to participate in the annual festival on the Nile. The Administration Board rejected a petition Tuesday that would have allowed the team to go.

The trip would require members of the team to leave Harvard a week before Christmas vacation in order to be in Egypt for the opening of the festivities December 15.

In turning down the team members petition, the Ad Board cited the Regulation for Students in Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges which states that no student may extend Christmas or April vacation.

"The Administrative Board doesn't feel it can fall to set on the regulations," Dean Whitlock said yesterday.

"I have made a study of the precedents since 1870, and incidents such as this have come up a number of times, but in those hundred or so casen, the students involved missed only one or two classes. There has never been an instance of extending vacation for a whole week," he said.

This is the record year that Harvard has been invited by the Egyptian government to row against teams from Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Cairo and the Cairo Police Rowing Club. Last year the Crimson swept the Nile regatta, winning races at Luxor and Cairo.

Coach Harry Parker pointed out that the team missed four to five days of classes last year.

"Last year, however, the invitation came only about a week before the event," Parker said. "It did not go up before the board. Maybe if they had been asked, they would have said no."

He added that the students did not have a hearing before the Board made its decision.

"The oarsmen themselves feel they had no opportunity to notify the board of what they were going to do," he said. "My point is that it's more than just a race. Last year the experience was a pretty special thing. At least for me, it was a real eye-opener.

The crew races are just a small part of the festival, which is a re-creation of what went on in the says of the pharaohs. The Crimson participated last year in a ceremony in the temple at Luzor and did a good deal of sightseeing. "The Egyptian people really made an effort to show us things," Parker said.

Harvard's participation in the regatte had been tentatively approved by the Ivy League and Harvard's Standing Committee on Athletics.

The team's only hope is that the board reconsider its position or give the oarsmen a hearing to present their point of view. As of now, however, it looks as though the board is going to stand by its decision.

"Their only recourse," Dean Whitlock said, "is for them to have the policy changed by taking the regulation to the floor of the Faculty.