Ivy Committee Declares Yale Student Ineligible

The Ivy Group Eligibility Committee has declared a freshman at Yale ineligible for intercollegiate athletics for having part of his secondary school education subsidized.

Acting on a complaint originally filed by Harvard, the Committee passed its ineligible ruling last October, and is now publicizing it through Ivy League alumni magazines, so that "all alumni will know we mean to enforce the code," Dean Watson reported last night.

This action marks the first time that this clause of the Ivy code has been invoked to disqualify an athlete, and is clearly meant to be a test case, Watson stated.

The student involved was football captain and 170-lb standout halfback for his high school in Chicago two years ago.

After falling to be accepted at Yale, he spent one year at Cheshire School in Cheshire, Conn., on a scholarship partially subsidized by a group of Yale alumni and other men from Chicago, Watson revealed.

The leader of the group was a former member of the Yale Club of Chicago's Scholarship Committee, it was learned last night.

Student Denies Code Violation

Contacted in New Haven, the student involved pointedly denied that he had broken the Ivy Code ruling, and expressed hope that he might soon regain eligible status after the "mix-up" had been straightened out.

Yale's member of the Eligibility Committee, Dean Francis C. Carroll, refused to discuss the matter last night. "We can't release anything on this, he stated.

But Watson said yesterday: "This was in complete violation of the rules. We feel strongly he cannot be declared eligible." He was in agreement with Dean Francis B. Godolphin, member of the Committee from Princeton.

The section of the Ivy Group Agreement, recently reprinted in Ivy alumni magazines, reads:

"No student entering after September 1, 1953 shall be eligible whose secondary school education was subsidized or whose post-college education is promised by an institution or a group of individuals not closely related to the family as a consideration for his attending the particular institution."

"The ruling must be observed and complied with," Watson emphasized. "If alumni feel we are not going to take the rule seriously, we will be weakened immediately. It's unfortunate for the student involved, but we want all alumni to be aware of the code."

Violation Discovered at Harvard

The apparent subsidization was first discovered by Dean Bender's office.

In 1953-54 at Cheshire there were two boys from Chicago; both allegedly received outside financial assistance from men in Chicago. One boy, the friend of the student now at Yale, in applying to Harvard, had written on his scholarship application form that the Yale Club of Chicago had subsidized his year at Cheshire.

Immediate checking by Bender and Yale revealed that the Yale Club had not been directly involved, but that many of the men assisting in sending the two boys East had been affiliated with the Yale Club. The freshman at Yale was thus implicated and disqualified after he had entered Yale this fall.

He has since played nothing but intramural athletics. His friend who applied to Harvard while at Cheshire did not get accepted by any eastern college.

Will Remain Ineligible

"The boy is in a tough position," Dean Godolphin said in Princeton, "but the ruling was announced about two years before it went into effect. Alumni should have known about it. Obviously, the first case that comes up is in a sense a test case. This seemed to us to be a legitimate one to enforce."

The student will remain ineligible until the Committee shall declare him otherwise, Watson reported