Let the Athletes Take a Break

The Ivy League’s new policy requiring seven weeks of “dead time” for all varsity athletes aims to encourage athletes to get involved in other extracurricular activities besides sports. With seven weeks off, so the reasoning goes, athletes will have time to pursue other interests and become more broadly involved in their school community. The reasoning is sound, just as the opposition of many vocal athletes on campus is not surprising. The outcry over this new policy sheds important light on the nature of competitive athletics at Harvard, and shows how athletics has negative effects on the cohesion of the Harvard community.

Chiefly, protests over the new rule demonstrate that some athletes are not interested in getting involved in extracurricular activities beyond the confines of their sports. Harvard heavyweight crew captain Michael J. Skey ’03 sarcastically remarked to The Crimson that athletes are “not going to stop training because a bunch of presidents got together and thought it would be a good idea for them to join the cello group for seven weeks.” Skey expresses a contemptuous view of broad involvement in Harvard activities. Athletics, unlike many other extracurricular pursuits, breeds a subculture that values intensity and dedication to the exclusion of participation in outside activities. Skey’s comments are a sad reflection of this phenomenon.

Far more disturbing are the plans of several athletes to openly flout the new policy and train during the off-weeks anyway. Athletes would be rejecting a unique opportunity to make other positive contributions to the Harvard community through cultural clubs and public service organizations.

This adamant refusal to even consider broader involvement should lead us to seriously question the common gripe of many athletes: that their contributions are especially valuable to the diversity of interests that adds to the Harvard experience. Perhaps their participation in athletics alone would justify such a claim if athletes were to reach outside of their circle of teammates more often.

But evidence at Harvard and beyond suggests that, in general, they do not. The prevalence of all-athlete blocking groups indicates a strong tendency for athletes to self-segregate, which is partly understandable given the difficult social climate which Harvard students face. But a recent book by James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen, The Game of Life, examines the self-segregation of athletes as a larger trend, among other negative impacts that athletics can have on academic communities.

For example, some athletes hold unnecessarily dismal views of their classmates. Varsity crew team member Leigh K. Pascavage ’04 asserted in a Crimson op-ed that “the Harvard athlete protects Harvard from being populated entirely by people who spend their afternoons in the library.”

Sadly, Pascavage is not alone in her cynical assessment of her fellow students. In a letter to The Crimson last spring, then co-captain of the women’s basketball team M. Katie Gates ’02 suggested that opposition to the negative effects of athletics on campus arises solely from “introverted geniuses,” and she used the sarcastic term as a label for proponents of ending the admissions office’s favoritism towards under-qualified athletic recruits.

These comments give us some insight into why self-segregation occurs. The assumptions that Pascavage and Gates make about their fellow students suggest that they are not interested in friendships with others outside of athletic circles—those so-called bookworms cowering in the library.

In her op-ed, Pascavage suggests another interesting reason for athletes’ incestuous social circles. Some like her believe, quite simply, that they are superior to their classmates. “Unlike other students who join activities throughout high school and college for the sole purpose of putting them on their applications,” muses Pascavage, “Ivy League athletes exhibit a level of maturity and dedication well beyond that of their peers.”

Apparently, dedication to any extracurricular outside of athletics lies beyond the scope of Pascavage’s condescending view of her non-athlete peers. Such an attitude dismisses passionate community service volunteers as ruthless resume-builders, master musicians as frauds without true dedication to their craft and so on. It should offend anyone who has ever loved or cared about an activity other than a sport.

Athletes protest double standards and unfair prejudice from the Harvard community when instead they should examine their own narrow perceptions of their classmates. The Ivy League’s new “dead time” policy gives varsity athletes seven weeks to do exactly that. Encouraging them to explore other extracurricular interests and to interact with a broader range of fellow students provides an unprecedented opportunity to challenge misperceptions on both sides. And the cynicism of some athletes’ protests against the policy suggests that this opportunity comes not a moment too soon.

Luke Smith ’04, a Crimson editor, is an economics concentrator in Quincy House.