A SWIMMING POOL?

Sometimes through the stress and worry of large responsibilities, the Corporation has no time to lend its necessary permission to a much needed innovation. Sometimes it does not realize that student opinion is quite so deeply concerned with such an enterprise as it, actually is. But when the Senior class returns the verdict, as it did on this recent questionnaire, that there is more undergraduate interest in swimming than in crew, hockey, or track, then it is high time to consider the construction of a swimming pool a matter of considerable importance.

New ideas of an athletic nature are often forced to give place to the more vital curriculum problems. Such a college as Harvard must devote a great deal of its time to preserving that scholastic standard to which it owes its reputation. Justified as this policy may be in the long run, it sometimes causes the unintentional disregard of interests vital to undergraduate athletics.

Thus Harvard today has no swimming pool that is worthy of the name. It flounders along in two rain-barrels and a nearby river, while many think that this delinquency is caused by lack of funds or a proper building location. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Athletic Association has adequate finances which it is only too willing to devote to a pool; it has had them for some time. Moreover the plan of constructing a pool on the site of the Hemenway Gymnasium which might have conflicted with a projected chemical laboratory was abandoned in favor of a highly practical location on the bank of the Charles below the Weld Boat House. The Athletic Association and the Planning Board have needed only official sanction to begin work immediately. The one remaining silent voice is that of the Corporation. With student opinion so clearly apparent, there seems no longer to be an adequate reason for refusing assent.