PROBATION AND ATHLETICS.

There are two excellent reasons for the College rule that men on probation shall not compete in intercollegiate athletics, but is does not appear that this prohibition should be extended, as it now it, to intramural sports. In the first instance, the rule acts as a strong incentive to better academic work, and is again justified because athletics often take more time than a man on probation can afford to spare from his studies. To men capable of playing on the major teams the fear of probation is a powerful stimulus; for men debarred on account of their studies not only miss any quantity of glory, but are not generally respected, in spite of the remark made by a contributor to the Advocate that there is current an attitude "which not only tolerates but condones with an athlete on probation." There, in the case of the University and Freshman teams the rule is sound.

On the other hand, when applied to sports within the College this rule seems ineffective and harmful, for it affords no real stimulus and deprives men of legitimate and normal exercise. In the first place no man will exert himself over-much in order to be eligible for a tennis tournament or to play on the "Chuck-a-Pucks," and in the second place, these scrub sports do not require any more time or energy than the normal youth should devote to h is daily exercise. In discouraging this the arrangement is distinctly harmful. Here we might well profit by the example of the familiar punishment of "waking the area" in use at West Point.

In plotting out their prohibitions, the powers have for some reason allowed one delightful inconsistency; namely, that men on probation may compete in the Leiter Cup baseball series, which is by far more exacting than many of the forbidden forms of recreation. We point out this exception, not in order that it may be forced in o the scheme, but to show that the restriction on the intramural ports is unnecessary, and because we believe that it does more harm than good.