THE OVER-EMPHASIS BUGABOO

Frazier Hunt's article in the current "Cosmopolitan" merely reiterates once more the cry of over-emphasis of college athletics. The unbalanced predominance of sports in American universities is a favorite subject for the criticism of a small army of alarmists who are forever throwing their hands up in horror at the younger generation. They talk about the problem a great deal, but they never do anything about it. They offer no panacea.

It has been pointed out before and it can well be pointed out again that there are several obvious fallacies in the arguments of those who uphold the thesis that the colleges are headed for hell and damnation because the stadiums are packed on autumn Saturday afternoons. In the first place, the only sport about which the undergraduate, at least at Harvard, is even inclined to be irrational, is football, and football extends through about two months of the nine-month college year. Perhaps those alarmists will concede the possibility of a little study being accomplished by the undergraduates in the remaining seven months of the year.

The fact that undergraduate feeling, in general as well as in the particular instance of football, is almost universally grossly misinterpreted must be taken into consideration. Students seldom reach the heights of enthusiasm about anything, and they never stay on those heights for long. Whatever minor evils it causes as a temporary distraction, football certainly does not have and never can have a great enough hold on the undergraduate permanently to warp his point of view or seriously to interfere with his education.