Communication

To the Editors of the Crimson:

The general indignation excited by the mismanagement in distributing seats for the Yale game has brought to light some points in the existing system of giving out tickets which I should like to call attention to in your columns if I may have space. The management has evidently considered that men who work or sweat for Harvard are entitled to receive favors: for that they are doing more than giving football players good seats for their families or intimate friends is painfully plain to all of us. But in acting up to this belief the management has either discriminated most unfairly,--or has been guilty of a carelessness which is no less unfair. For while some prominent individuals have received 80 tickets and over in advance of the sale, others, almost as prominent, have received none--among them a member of last year's 'Varsity crew, the editors-in-chief of the College papers (some of whom spend more hours in working on College matters than almost any other undergraduates) and the members of the debating teams, about the encouragement of which we cant so much. Would the graduate manager maintain that the president of even the Lampoon had not a better right to ticket privileges than a substitute on the Freshman squad? I cannot see how he could, especially since it is known that Boston speculators have been selling tickets in the middle section since last Friday.

It seems to me that this whole system which has borne such bad fruits this year is wrong. A man who plays in a game ought to have tickets enough for the people whom he wishes to have come to see him play. But surely this is all. Harvard undergraduate organizations are not commercial in spirit, nor are they like those in a political ward. The men who deserve favors at the hands of the College are those who would be the last to demand them, especially if they knew them to be granted at the cost of most of the loyal supporters of their College. Even the New York graduates who gave the boat-house, and to whom we all feel grateful, would probably be more than content if merely put on an equal footing with season ticket holders; the management which assumes the contrary of them or of prominent undergraduates is undertaking to assume a great deal. '99.