About That Mixed Eight

To the Sports Editor:

The Head of The Charles Regatta Committee defines a "mixed eight" as: "four male rowers, four female rowers with coxwain." A pretty straightforward definition, right? Yet somehow the "mixed eight" principle has encountered a whole lot of conceptual difficulty. It seems to rank as just slightly more difficult to grasp than that of a Harvard launch painted flourescent pink, and just slightly less difficult to grasp than John Higgenson rowing in a mixed single. What species of boat is a "mixed eight"?

Part of the problem is wrapped up in the ambiguity of the word, "athletic." There are athletic men and there are athletic women: the word itself is spelled and pronounced the same way in both cases, and yet the separate standards implicit in each make the comparison almost like that one would make between a fast boat and a fast friend. In a situation like a mixed eight, where men and women are not separate, but not equal either, what standard of "athletic" can apply to the team? Can a mixed eight ever work as a consistent unit, a sort of Sprite "limon" of rowing? Or can it only be understood as a fun Halloween horse costume, which is a unit through the strength of its cloth only?

Even the most tweedy alum Crimson old codger that Stephen Herzenberg could create in his article (see Crimson, (Oct. 24) couldn't have failed to notice that the heavyweight eight did work last Sunday. A fast boat should not pose any conceptual difficulties for any loyal Harvard alum, fictional or otherwise. Penultimate limon or not, that mixed eight functioned as one smooth unit of eight athletes rowing their guts out together. Determination, pain, (and possibly sheer stupidity) know no sexual boundaries. Crew may also be more egalitarian than most sports in that efficiency, technical smoothness, and mental toughness can count as much as brute strength. The men in the boat trusted and respected the ability and seriousness of the Radcliffe rowers. In this spirit they rowed so well that they made it easy for the women to row hard. The women, in turn, rowed so hard, it was easy for the men to extend themselves to their own limits. A team effort such as this defies standard sexist categorizations and qualifications of the word "athletic." It is sad and somehow almost quaint, then, that Steve Herzenberg, in cleverly and astutely trashing the weak women stereotype, can only substitute in the she-man "Big Bertha" stereotype: the concept of a fast mixed eight can be understood only as being made up of four men and four pseudomen. The team of men and women that I know only missed a couple of buoys; Herzenberg's eight would have been disqualified by the Regatta Committee at the starting line. --Cynthia Strong '79