Academics Must Take Priority in Admissions

To the editors:

I read it first in the Boston Globe, but here it is in The Crimson: A first-year hockey player has left the University, after two months, to play hockey elsewhere (Sports, “Less Moore, M. Hockey to Collide With Big Red Menace,” Nov. 16). So the question is, why was this student ever admitted to Harvard in the first place?

His history—too many teams to recount here—suggests he was basically a professional from the very beginning, even if somehow playing in all those leagues and farm systems wasn’t quite a violation of National Collegiate Athletic Association rules. Often athletes have the good sense to quit varsity teams yet stay in school, because they are properly grateful to have the chance to study here. Yet this student has chosen to leave Harvard practically as soon as he arrived, which says only that he was never serious about education to begin with. Maybe it is a refreshing absence of cant not to pay lip service to education, but this seems to me to be the least Harvard should expect from its applicants, even athletes recruited to play sports. In the meantime we have Jesse E. Lane’s brief achievements on the ice to salute: three games, one assist and four penalties.

It’s fine for Harvard to recruit athletes, but this decision strikes me as a travesty. The signs were there all along. While one is happy for Lane’s Holworthy roommates, who will enjoy the extra space in their suite now that he has left, in the meantime a Harvard place has gone wasted. As someone who has taught secondary students in the Summer School, I know a few students who could have usefully filled it. One of them, a young woman from Dallas, had her heart set on Harvard and was waitlisted, never to come off. She was a superb student, and belonged here. It makes one angry to think about it.

Eric A. Weinberger

Nov. 15, 2001

The writer is a preceptor in the Expository Writing program.