Freshman Football

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I've just returned from the first Harvard football rally of the year and can't help thinking I've witnessed the burial of a friend. Surely this isn't Harvard University, the greatest of schools, the ultimate goal of our nation's top teenage students? Now I'm just a local boy, fresh out of a high-school which keeps football in one place and studies in another; but if a half-hearted, unspirited, insipid rally similar to tonight's ever took place at Newton High, we'd give up both football and our school. There are, I am told, about ten thousand students in our fair university which every day seems to assume more and more the aspect of a crimson funeral parlor. It's a funny thing, but my Chem 1 course has more noise and people than the group which braved the moonlit evening to cheer our boys to victory tonight. How do we expect fight in a football team when the cheering section has the semblance of a professional mourners' society?

Excuse, please, my naive and unwanted observations, but I'm new around here and haven't yet acquired that refined, cultivated apathy which evidently marks the Harvardman's attitude to sports and intercollegiate athletics. Sure, we have top teachers, a peerless curriculum, and the best of facilities, but our gut and fight is something that I wouldn't boast about. The CRIMSON doesn't have much to crusade about nowadays, why not help out here? it seems to me that a university newspaper holds the privilege of improving its school spirit. Let's begin by getting some meat in our cheerleaders. For better or worse, we're co-ed. How about a little femininity up front? The female type from up the street preferred. Follow this with a few original ideas and maybe Harvard will see a winning football team, a cheering home section, and a general uplifting of school pride. Don't you think it's time for a change? Buddy Helfant '55