Lewis and Scalise Are Spot-On About Athlete Attrition

Last month, The Crimson reported that one in four Class of 2020 varsity athletes quit during their time at the College. The report prompted responses from Harry R. Lewis ’68, a former Dean of Harvard College, who argued that “Ivy League athletics is premised on the freedom of athletes, like other Harvard students, to rethink their interests and commitments,” and from Harvard Athletics Director Robert L. Scalise, who described a student athlete’s decision to stop or continue playing a sport as akin to a student changing their concentration.

We wholeheartedly agree with Lewis and Scalise’s reasoning. Harvard’s athletes are students just like any of us. Accordingly, they deserve the right to decide, as members of our community, what their participation in student life will look like.

We affirm our belief that student-athletes, as individuals with unique experiences and mentalities borne from having dedicated themselves to a high level of athletic excellence, have an important, valuable role at Harvard. Their athletic talents, experience, and intellect diversify Harvard, just as other students’ academic, extracurricular or personal experiences enrich our school community.

This understanding of the role of student-athletes, we believe, clarifies that the athlete admissions process should prioritize considerations of how recruited athletes will contribute to campus in their role as students first and foremost. In other words, student-athletes should be evaluated in the same way the admissions office evaluates other students: not merely in terms of their athletic capabilities, but holistically on how the sum of their characteristics, athletic and otherwise, will enrich our community. In fact, Lewis and Scalise’s defense of athletes who walk off their teams cannot, it seems, cohere with an admissions system that treats athletes preferentially.

In recognizing the rightful place student-athletes have in the broader Harvard community, we hope and expect that student-athletes engage academically, socially, and extracurricularly outside of their teams, and, at the same time, that the student body engages with the wide range of talented athletes Harvard has attracted. Since 2015, our varsity teams have won 54 Ivy League Championships and their successes have, unfortunately, not been celebrated or recognized widely enough across the river. These successes should be the collective pride of our campus, and any social fragmentation that exists at the College along athlete/non-athlete lines must be viewed as the shared responsibility of our entire community. We pride our school for its diversity, and as such, we should collectively aim — on all sides — to celebrate a diverse array of student achievements.

A 25 percent athletic attrition rate is not inherently bad. That being said, the athletic department should be cognizant of the environment and culture within teams and support their athletes as they try to navigate their dual roles at Harvard. The time-consuming nature of varsity athletics requires student-athletes to strike a careful balancing act while on campus, and we think it behooves the athletic department to work towards a better understanding of why student-athletes choose to exit, lest the explanations point to trends worth disrupting. It is more than reasonable for students to change passions, but it is also possible for an unsustainably demanding environment to extinguish such passion.

Lastly, we appreciate that Harvard athletics gives student-athletes the freedom to leave their sports as they embark on their journeys through Harvard. Student-athletes should not feel boxed into their athlete roles and, like any other students, should be encouraged to explore diverse social groups, intellectual passions, and other extracurriculars. They are far more than means for our University to do well in a league, and we commend the athletic department for recognizing the value of their athletes and being supportive of their broader, and potentially shifting, interests.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.