A Game for the Leisure Class

The official date of completion is April 30. But already one can see elements of finality in the beautiful new neo-Colonial squash and tennis complex across the river. The clerk of the works, Lee Phelps of Harvard Planning and Real Estate (HPRE), notified The Crimson--through construction foreman Bill O'Leary--that we could not tour the building until it received a "C of O," or certificate of occupancy. Yet a quick walk around the structure gives information enough.

At the moment, construction workers are hanging the windows. From the glances one can glean from outside, the exterior brick walls, aluminum ceiling stuccoed on top and the electrical guts of the building look as if they are in place. While the landscaping will have to wait for spring, bulldozers and other machines are erecting the foundations of what appears to be a perimeter park replete with fence and monument. Perhaps HPRE is keeping the project under wraps because it lacks a (released) name. The blueprints in the contractor's trailer simply read, "Harvard Racquet Facility." Yet the complex--which will include 16 international squash courts and six indoor tennis courts, as well as a weight facility and offices for the Athletic Department--has potentially name-worthy donors among wealthy alumni who have been reared for generations in these sports.

Squash and tennis are Harvard sports, just as crew is peculiarly Crimson. They are pastimes of the leisure class, present and past--present because of past. For the last century, at least, squash has been an integral part of College life, with eight squash courts integrated into the basement of Dunster House, Harvard's first house (established circa 1930). Many other courts are scattered through the houses, at Linden Street and in the Hemenway Gymnasium. Prior to the Soldier's Field complex, the newest and nicest courts were in the Quad.

In both squash and tennis, Harvard excels. Last weekend, for example, the women's squash team was positioned to claim its seventh straight Ivy League championship title when it lost to Princeton. Squash and tennis are also Princeton and Yale sports, if we work from the theory of the leisure class. Harvard's coaches deserve credit for recruiting and training an impressive crop of players. But that credit only extends so far: our peers come from elite private schools scattered across three continents.

Harvard's traditional reputation--and reality--as a grooming school for the international ruling elite makes the school an excellent fit for squash junkies, perhaps on par with Princeton, but better academically. The bargain is mutual: squash players boost Harvard's team, and the team provides a welcome outlet for kids who were nursed on slow-bouncing, soft, black rubber balls. Harvard's new reputation--and reality--as a meritocratic training ground for new generations of symbolic analysts has added a welcome twist to the squash world. Those students from public high schools, who might have had a decent tennis game but probably never played squash, if they even heard of it, have been introduced through friends and team members to the game.

This is no small matter. These students are learning to be part of social elite, one whose financial basis requires their economic services, as they gain the habits of the leisure class. Squash, the most important sport at the Harvard clubs of New York and Boston, is an integral part of that world; it is the equivalent, or better, of a corporate lunch in its power to make intimate otherwise alien economic relations.

It is fitting that the new multi-million dollar facility be dedicated to racquet competition. Squash and tennis can and should remain the sports of the new Harvard. They are fun and clean, doable in an hour, good cardiovascular exercise and intensely competitive. Hopefully the new Harvard Racquet facility will be devoted as much to the intramural and non-league players as to the varsity and junior varsity teams. In that way, old and new Harvard can come together in the athletics of a new century.

Joshua A. Kaufman '98 is a social studies concentrator living in Dunster House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.