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COMMUNICATIONS.

THE ATHLETIC QUESTION.

EDITORS HERALD-CRIMSON.-It seems to me, now that the feeling of the large mass of Harvard men has been so well set forth in the letter of Prof. Richards of Yale, and in yesterday's communication to your paper, that it would be only fair and just for a leading member of the Harvard faculty to let the students know the reasons that actuated the large majority of the faculty in accepting the resolutions. The faculty, I hear from a private source, almost unanimously rejected the preambles. The preambles then were not our faculty's reasons for their action. These preambles, however, were written by their sole representative at the New York convention. Absurd and illogical as the preambles taken together with the resolutions confusedly are, by the public they are thought to be fully endorsed by the Harvard faculty. As usual, the faculty, I suppose, will keep a dignified (?) silence. This silence on the part of the faculty, is generally considered by those who know of the rejection of the preambles, to arise from either the faculty's knowledge of the weakness of their side of the question, or from the lack of a leading member who has an intimate knowledge of the doings of the undergraduates at their conventions. The writer of this communication thinks that the silence arises from a mixture of both of the above reasons.

In your yesterday's editorial, you allude to the wire-pulling methods of the faculty. That phrase, I think, is the proper one with which to characterize their present action in regard to the petition from the executive officers of our different athletic associations, which is now before them. The faculty earnestly wish that this petition should not be made public. For, say they, we will lose all hopes of coercing Yale, if it should be made public. Is not Yale entitled to the knowledge of the true state of feeling at Harvard? How then shall we characterize the action of a body of men (or their representatives) who, for gaining their point, will suppress, or try to suppress public opinion?

This petition should be made known to the students by their representatives, the executive officers of the athletic associations. The college as a whole should take action on a matter of such vital interest, and for that purpose a mass meeting to discuss the question and take action should be held at the first convenient date. L. B.

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