THE MALCOM X-FACTOR: Y I H8 Txt Msgs: Ban Gets It Right

Your section leader scowls when you do it in class. It’s expensive, and some pundits have claimed that it’s diluting our understanding of the English language. And with the prevalence of cell phones in the hands of today’s youth, it’s only going to get worse.

But thankfully, the NCAA is putting a stop to it.

Earlier this week, the Board of Directors of college athletics’ highest governing body approved a ban on text message recruiting, eliminating text messages to both parents of recruits and the kids themselves.

To that, I say: It’s about damn time.

And I’m not the only one who thinks as much. Besides the Board of Directors, a number of other people are outspoken against this terrible practice. In fact, it was the Ivy League that served as the catalyst behind the new rule.

“It’s a no-brainer,” Harvard football coach Tim Murphy says of the ban. “I’ve got a 16-year old daughter who doesn’t get enough sleep, she studies all the time, she’s a three-sport athlete. If she’s getting calls at night and she’s getting 12 texts everyday that she has to respond to, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Murphy is right—the pressures of the recruiting process are great enough as it is, and a barrage of text-messages surely doesn’t help.

But that’s not my biggest beef. I don’t have that much sympathy for the athlete whose greatest concern is the embarrassment of riches that is his college choice, and I can’t lie, I didn’t really study in high school all that much.

My problem—with text messaging in general, not just of the recruiting variety—is that it’s impersonal, impractical and irrational.

Text-addicts, maybe you’ll understand it better if I speak your language: i h8 txtn, itz stpd & it makz no sens.

Text messaging is killing our relationships—sometimes, literally.

Just ask comic actor Liam Sullivan. He’s the creator of the aptly-titled “txt msg brkup,” a six and-a-half minute YouTube sensation that provides some much-needed social commentary on the perils of the text message in regards to romance.

“You couldn’t do it in person,” Sullivan screams as his shoe-loving alter-ego Kelly, “you had to text-message break-up!”

It’s the same for recruits. Do you mean to tell them that you want a kid to commit to an institution for four years and—in the Ivy League’s case—spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on tuition, and you can’t even pick up the phone to give him a call?

Thankfully for coaches everywhere, I wasn’t a recruited athlete in high school. Had I been one, I’d be at the school that texted me the least. By that, I mean that I wouldn’t be at Harvard.

“We text like crazy, and we’re good at it,” Murphy says. “If you’re going to have a rule, you’ve got to be good at it, so we’ve done a good job.”

I’m sure the football program doesn’t miss me much, but Murphy concedes that there’s something else wrong with texting besides the fact that it’s terribly intrusive.

“It does kind of reinforce some inappropriate aura, unrealistic relationships, like you’re best buds,” he says.

I agree that it’s unrealistic—anything is better than typing out words with just one finger—but best buds? I don’t text my best buds, I call them, or better yet, I give them a face-to-face.

Is that too much to ask of recruiters as well?

Maybe I’m bitter because my cell phone plan only gives me something like 50 free texts per month, and I always go over my limit (sorry Mom). Maybe I’m upset because my finger reflexes are a bit slow, and I can’t churn out 160 characters in 42 seconds like the text-messaging record holder (it’s a real competition, look it up).

Or maybe I’m upset because I actually like to talk to people, see their faces, look into their eyes, and hear their voices. I love to laugh, but humor is something that’s completely lost by way of the text message. I also like to say what I want without a machine trying to guess my next move (predictive text will baffle me to my grave).

And honestly, is it too much to ask for a gesticulation or two?

Our conference has some bizarre rules when it comes to sports. The anti-playoff football regulation comes to mind, as does the lack of athletic scholarships that plagues every one of the Crimson’s Division I programs.

But when it comes to texting, they’ve finally gotten it right.

Bravo, Ivy League. Or, for posterity’s sake: c u l8r, txt msgz. da wrld is a beta plc w/o u.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.