From Cornell

(From The Cornell Alumni News)

Ate you have no doubt observed, President Hopkins of Dartmouth has issued, in time to catch the dull Monday morning papers, a plan to strip football of its present garment of iniquity. He proposes, first, that eligibility be limited to sophomores and juniors; second, that major games be arranged on a reciprocal basis, that is, for instance, that Cornell play Dartmouth simultaneously in Ithaca and Hanover; and third, that paid coaching be abolished, and that all coaching be done by seniors.

President Hopkins' proposals have aroused less interest and discussion than one would have anticipated. Student intellectual apathy seems to have benumbed even the discussion of the Theory of Football. The local athletic hierarchy refuses to be interviewed, on the principle, no doubt, that accused felons should be wary of reporters. The Faculty members approached, oblivious dwellers on the slopes of Etna, had not even bothered to read Mr. Hopkins' proposals.

It all seems somehow a little peculiar. Nearly everyone likes football, the drama of the big games, the mimic, well-regulated warfare of October and November, the annual emotional charging of the Campus which goes off with a vast explosion on Thanksgiving Day. Everyone knows that it doesn't make any difference in the march of civilization, but the emotion is none the less real for that reason. Football is the one thing that undergraduates can do better than their elders, the one student activity that can attract the country's attention on its own merits. For this reason the students and alumni want it to be conducted as well as possible. President Hopkins thinks that the conditions of football will be improved if it is done worse. This conclusion is not supported by this disillusioned observer's notes on student and human nature. If football is reduced to a sort of romp between colleges, will the student body in desperation turn to scholastic competition? One is inclined to doubt it.