Faculty Silence Hurts NCAA Stand

The most disconcerting aspect of Harvard's recent stand against the NCAA hockey tournament is that absolutely nothing has been done except to withdraw the varsity from Championship competition. The Faculty Committee on Athletic Sports has boycotted the event four years in a row, but waited until last winter before even bothering to given an explanation for its actions.

The Committee has been remarkably reticent about the entire situation and made its one policy declaration last winter only after receiving a formal 29-page request from the Undergraduate Athletic Council. In denying the 1963 varsity-the E.C.A.C. champion-a tournament berth, the FCAS simply "reaffirmed" its 1962 stand without the slightest elaboration.

Motivations Uncertain

The unfortunate effect of this lofty silence has been to obscure the motivations behind the University's abstention from tournament play, is the Athletic Committee merely protecting Harvard from the "professionalism in spirit" it sees in the Western Hockey League; or is the FCAS trying to do something about the deplorable state of Western hockey by embarrassing the NCAA?

If the Athletic Department is simply preventing Crimson skaters from tainting themselves through contact with their "commercialized" counterparts from the West, then the Faculty's silence is understandable. The less publicity given the matter, the better off Harvard's student athlete will be.

But such a position in hockey is hardly consistent with the University's willingness to expose its athletes in other sports (swimming, track, and wrestling) to National tournament competition. It also suggests an inability on the part of the athletic committee to maintain Harvard's high standards in athletics by means other than isolationism.

A much more credible basis for the committee's decision, and one seemingly supported by the Athletic Director's 1962 position, is the belief that something must be done about the "heavily subsidized specialists" now playing in Western Hockey League uniforms. Harvard is not competing in the NCAA's post-season tournaments because "hockey in the Western League seems to be on the wrong track."

Is Silence Effective?

Significantly, Harvard's current policy of silence does nothing to either improve the NCAA tournament or got Western hockey back on the right "track." Alterations will be made only if Harvard and other schools resort to the type of publicized criticism employed by the University last year.

Condemnation of the more unpleasant aspects of College Hockey has not been limited to Cambridge or even the East. John Mariucci, coach of the Minnesota sextet, has said "Eastern teams have been the only ones that are doing anything for American hockey." Like Harvard, Minnesota has often refused to compete against such rabid recruiters as Michigan and Denver.

Vocal and continued criticism is an important means of applying pressures for badly needed reform. The Faculty Committee on Athletics owes Harvard's finest hockey team in a decade at least this much.