CHEERLEADERS' POSITION

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In its action to change the status of cheerleaders and cheerleading at Harvard, the Undergraduate Athletic Council... felt the need of an institutional guarantee that graduates would annually be replaced. The Council, without any previous deliberation on the subject and without showing the common courtesy of consulting members of the existing squad as to their reaction to the change, adopted a program which this year adds four UAC members to the cheerleading group but at the same time insists that five of the present members not be allowed to finish cheering this season.

The members of the squad oppose in principle the UAC plan which restricts cheering to varsity letter winners; however, although six of the nine members of the squad will automatically be excuded from cheering next year because of this plan, the cheerleaders, to a man, will do their best to help the UAC achieve what it believes to be a better system.

The cheerleaders recognize that they are under the aegis of the Undergraduate Athletic Council. However... they nonetheless feel that the UAC has unmistakeable moral obligation to allow the present members to complete their season of cheering.

To ask five men to leave a group for which they have diligently worked, a group which is acknowledged by other Ivy cheerleaders as the "best in the league" and which actually pays for many of its own expenses out of the squad members' pockets, is adding a degree of insult to injury which is absolutely intolerable. In such a case as this, personal dignity prohibits any member of the squad from cheering if any man is cut from the group.

The Harvard cheerleaders ask the undergraduate body, faculty, and alumni to join with them and with the Freshman Union Committee in categorically censuring this obstinancy and moral inadequacy on the part of the Undergraduate Athletic Council. Rupert M. Landauer '59   Captain, Harvard Cheerleaders.