Highlight of the Year

To the Editors of The Crimson:

As both a die-hard Harvard hockey fan, and a critic of Harvard mystique, I was disturbed by Charles T. Kurzman's column, "Pointing the Big Finger" (Crimson, April 7).

This year's hockey season was without doubt the highlight of my school year. Not only did Harvard come within a goal of a championship in a nationally contested sport, it did so in a way any hockey fan should appreciate. The team's focus throughout the season was on agile skating and passing, not on the bullying and cheap shots strategy which currently dominates North American hockey. Coach Bill Cleary and his team showed the NCAA that you don't have to play dirty hockey to win. This apparently doesn't mean much to Kurzman, and I doubt that he got any enjoyment whatever out of the 1985-'86 season. Nonetheless, a sizeable majority of Harvard students did. That in itself is a powerful reason why Harvard should continue to support its hockey team.

Moreover, Kurzman's underlying premise appears to be that athletic ability is a frivolous, unpraiseworthy attribute, especially when compared to more "Harvardian" skills such as grade-getting or piccolo playing. This is an elitist attitude which exemplifies much of what is wrong about Harvard. The ability to get good grades and the ability to play a musical instrument are merely skills. Like any other skills, they are acquired by a combination of innate ability and practice. They are also ethically neutral; they can be used for ill as well as for good. I see no magical distinction which makes them "better" than the ability to play hockey.

To many people, of course, Harvard stands for the proposition that "intellectual activity" (read: the kinds of things that get you accepted at Harvard University) is superior to "physical activity" (read: the kinds of things people at "lesser" institutions do). If Harvard is based upon this proposition, as Kurzman suggests, it shouldn't be. There are already too many hierarchies at this school separating people into inferior and superior categories. Wouldn't it be simpler and more human to say that good piccolo players and Scott Fusco should excel at what they do and leave it at that? Why is it necessary to say that one is better that the other?

It's unfortunate, I suppose, that a large majority of Harvard-students would rather attend the Harvard-Cornell game than a piccolo concerto, but I can't think of a reasonable solution to this problem. An administrative decision to weaken the Harvard hockey team in order to increase attendance at "weightier" events strikes me as a tad unresponsive to student interests. Harvard does have an obligation to recruit piccolo players and to provide them with adequate facilities and instruction. I assume that it does so.

Harvard has a substantial academic reputation, and I understand why Kurzman doesn't wish to see it tarnished. He completely fails to convince me, however, that fielding a dominant hockey team will have this effect. His discussion of the admissions, living, and academic perquisites Harvard athletes supposedly enjoy is, by his own admission, undocumented rumor. Gossipy tripe about football players bragging over low SAT scores is meaningless. Also, the connection between athletes, investment policy, women's studies, and Afro-American Studies completely escapes me.

I hope (and believe) that neither Harvard students nor the administration share Kurzman's ideas. For me and a lot of other people, Cambridge would be a lot less bearable without the Harvard hockey team. Tom Wagner 1L