VOLUNTARY TAXATION

At the first athletic mass meeting of the year undergraduates of the college voluntarily took upon their shoulders the task of supporting the track and baseball team throughout the coming season. A near-crisis in Dartmouth athletics had been reached. The Athletic Council found itself unable to carry through expensive schedules without some guarantee of substantial student support. The freshmen were as yet uninitiated into the customs and traditions of Dartmouth athletic history. The whole college seemed infected with a kind of post-war "sleeping sickness".

Fortunately, appearances in this case were deceitful. The enthusiasm of a single mass meeting brought the .whole undergraduate body to its feet with a start. More than seven hundred students crowded the doors of the Commons dining hall, and when the request went out for season ticket pledges, the response was practically unanimous.

For some time there has been talk in Hanover of a compulsory athletic tax to be added to the tuition fee as a part of the recognized college expenses. Such a step might simplfy matters for the Athletic Council but the stand taken by the student body seems to refute postitively any argument of immediate necessity. Conscription should be kept as a last resort, for use only when the final alternative has failed; and that stage of indifiference to athletics still lies far in the future. Dartmouth undergraduates today are 'not disposed to await a draft, if a chance is first given them to volunteer their support for Dartmouth teams.