FROM THE UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR

Following the close of Dartmouth's successful football season The Dartmouth joining forces with The Harvard Crimson and the Yale News came out flat-footedly—or club-footedly (according to the point of view), in favor of measures designed to remove the present "over-emphasis on football."

Specifically The Dartmouth recommends the adoption of a four-game schedule and the elimination of all "set up" or early season practice games.

The following editorial "Outlawing the Football College" is reprinted from The Dartmouth :

Were football schedules limited to four games, each team playing a team in its own class, many of those tendencies in the present system which work to the detriment of intellectual interest would be adjusted. All of the undoubted fineness in the intercollegiate game, however, would be retained.

The blame for the present situation, through which football assumes more importance in the undergraduate eye and in the public eye than the primary purpose of the College, cannot be placed in any one place. The way the press plays up the game has a large influence, but the press cannot be blamed. Sporting writers are not leading the public into this hyperemotionall state over football. They are merely following the news; and the news of football today is written in terms of champions.

If we can devise some system to encourage the play aspect, then we will have travelled a long way toward adjusting a threatening situation. This is precisely what the four-game schedule, between teams of equal calibre and of the same vicinity, should do. The present annual elimination contest would be impossible. At the end of any given season many teams would remain undefeated over the country. Opportunity for hero worship, so deadening on the sport of the game, would be minimized. The public could not demand champions, and so their attention would be diverted to some other channel. This move would be reflected in the colleges, and undergraduates might more properly relate football to the curriculum.

Although it cannot be truthfully said that college football players do not like the game today, it is fairly certain that the fun of the game is decreased by the length of the present season. The last two games of even an eight game schedule are not relished at all. A fourgame schedule would remedy this; and it would do away, as well, with the necessity or desirability of spring or early fall practice. The squad could go into training with the opening of college, and be in tiptop shape for an opening game late in October.

In connection with this also, the professional coach should be eliminated as much as possible. With several exceptions, the goal of a professional coach is nothing other than to produce a "win-at-any-cost" team, so. that he can be assured of a fat contract the succeeding fall. The system of having coaches attached to the faculties of the colleges, and considered as such, is best. Second to this is the system, such as Dartmouth has, of having a graduate coach the team—more for the love of the game and interest in young men than for a number of dollars measured by the number of points the team can score.

We are under no illusion as to the possibility of this plan being put into operation soon, or even as to its sure-fire success were it instituted. But we do believe that serious consideration of it, as a possible remedy to lessen the athletic club aspect of the college, would be a move forward. Out of this consideration a significant advance would be assured, even though it may not come for a decade.

The Dartmouth also sponsored a campaign for undergraduate support of a World Court. This campaign to which was devoted much talk and many columns of print was concluded by a forum in which the topic was discussed and a poll taken by The Dartmouth and the World Court committee.

The exact vote was as follows: For entrance of the Unites States into the World Court with the Harding-Hughes-Coolidge reservations, 639.

For entrance into the World Court without reservations, 325.

Against entrance into the Court, 126.

These results were wired to The New Student by The Dartmouth to be placed with the results of similar polls which have been taken on practically every college campus in the country.

E. J. Duffy '26 and E. W. Miller '26, the Dartmouth delegates to the National Collegiate World Court conference at Princeton caried the results of the poll to that congress. At that meeting a delegation of undergraduates was elected to visit the White House for a formal expression of the national student opinion on the World Court.

The talk by Kirby Page in Dartmouth Hall previous to the official poll, stimulated a lively discussion among the undergraduates present. A ballot was taken for an expression of the opinion of those attending, the result of which was: For entrance without reservations, 30; for entrance with the Harding-Hughes-Coolidge reservations, 21; against entrance, 3.

Mr. Page declared that war results from the stupidity of not knowing how to settle disputes. "It is not enough that certain nations be members of the court," he said. "The price of peace is the submission to law by the nations of the world."

But The Dartmouth indicated in an editorial entitled "Our Creed Remains Dartmouth" that it did not consider its championing of causes since the opening of the year to have been crowned with complete success. Following is the editorial:

The time has come for THE DARTMOUTH to recant. Our first editorial for the year was entitled "Beginning a Year of Optimism." Now the influence of a carefree summer of leisure has passed, however, and we are able to relate various aspects of life more properly. This closer contact with reality has enabled us to appreciate the tremendous gap between what the Dartmouth College of undergraduates really is and what it might be. That gap being what it is, how on earth could we remain optimistic?

So the policy of THE DARTMOUTH is announced anew. We can do nothing better, we now think, than to hold up a mirror before the undergraduate body and let them view themselves as they are—instead of letting them remain basking complacently in the mellow light of what they have been told they are. For we are yet young enough to believe in ideals, and the undergraduate body—on surface evidence, at least—does not remotely resemble the ideal of an undergraduate body intelligently arranging values. "But," cry our vociferous critics from their dark corners, "Dartmouth is more sane and eager and liberal than other colleges." To which we reply, "Then may the Original Impetus help the others."

This new departure does not aim to destroy, in battling one by one the myths of Dartmouth liberalism, sanity toward athletics, outdoor life, fraternity. We believe in truth; and by revealing truth we believe we can help the College. We want to see it really what so many presume it to be, an educational institution where faculty and undergraduates alike are working to batter down prejudice, to provide leaders, to erect a valid code of values.

Someone has defined a cynic as "an idealist turned sour." We are not sour; but surely we are curdling. How could refrain from curdling while treasuring the ideal of Dartmouth as the Dartmouth President Hopkins has worked for; and yet sit by watching an undergraduate body persistently apathetic to vital problems outside their own provincial sphere (World Court), watching them negate liberal ideals (Pi Lambda Phi}, watching them worship a leather idol while rich thoughts wait around the corner (football).

We read yesterday, by one W. C. Summers: "If you abstained from any attempt to mould taste and followed implicitly the rule that directs that those who please to write must write to please, you could count on decent treatment." That thought has occurred in another form, following a communication which scored THE DARTMOUTH. We can only say we are not interested in writing to please, and do not care especially for decent treatment. What we do care for is the truth, and we are willing to stand for truth as we see it for the rest of the year. If any readers take exception they have the right to submit their case and we will welcome it. Let the case be decided by the validity of the contending opinions.

We believe in Dartmouth, and would like to believe in the Dartmouth undergraduate body. Perhaps the ideal was set too high, perhaps we are measuring "from the bottom of the stick." Perhaps we are wrong in construing the facts at our disposal as infallibly indicative of a vital weakness in the undergraduate group. We hope such is the case, and certainly will acknowledge it and be mighty happy if such is proven the case. But in the meantime we hold up the mirror to the undergraduate body.