ELIGIBILITY RULES.

The recent appointment of a committee to revise the eligibility rules in athletics calls attention particularly to two regulations which have lately done much to place Harvard at an unfair disadvantage in intercollegiate competition.

Of these two, the less harmful is the two-period rule. It provides that no man may play on teams of three different periods in the same year; and obviously possesses the faults of inelasticity and arbitrariness of classification. For instance, no exception is made in the case of an unusually versatile athlete who wishes to occupy the interval between football and rowing with competition in wrestling and fencing. In regard to classification it is theoretically and also practically possible for men to make both the baseball and track teams in one season. A simple reform would do away with this unfair situation: a committee, appointed to deal with each case separately, would provide the elasticity necessary for each individual athlete.

But greater need for immediate remedy is evident in the regulation concerning men who have played on a University team for two years but who are registered in a graduate school in their Senior year. At present such men are ineligible to represent Harvard in intercollegiate sports.

The agreement between Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, barring Freshmen from university teams, clearly contemplates three years as the period during which an athlete will be eligible to represent his college. Such a supposition is practical at Princeton and Yale. But at Harvard as many as one-quarter of each class either leave College or enter a graduate school before the middle of the Senior year. The result is, the Harvard teams lose valuable Senior material which at other colleges always remains available throughout the third year of eligibility. Thus it is evident that the three-year rule and the three-year degree are in direct opposition: the former provides for three years of eligibility, and the latter reduces the term to two years. The three-year degree is now so firmly established that this inconsistency can be remedied only by an alteration of the athletic regulation.

Although impossible to obtain statistics, we believe, from the cases which have appeared, that an interesting situation would be revealed, could it be known how many men have taken an extra year in College in order to play on a University team. In a day when the greatest emphasis is laid on athletic prowess, more athletes delay graduation than graduate as soon as practicable, the acknowledged proper course. Instead of a premium on loafing, as there is apt to be at present, athletics should offer to the man capable of the three year course, the same advantages as does debating, the Glee Club, or dramatics.

From this consideration of the subject it appears that a rule permitting men who finish their College course in three years to remain in athletics for another year while in the graduate schools, would obviate every difficulty. It not only would offer those leaving College at the end of their Junior year an inducement to remain for another year, but would give those capable of better work something for which to strive.