Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/184

 The struggles and sacrifices which he made in his undergraduate years are more than compensated for by the returns which come to him in later life.

I have read the most that has been published in recent years concerning the evils of inter-collegiate athletics—the extravagantly large amount of money necessary to support such a system, the confining of athletic training to a very limited number of students, the gambling, drinking, and other moral dissipations incident to big games, but though I have known personally as many undergraduate students, athletes and otherwise, as any college officer in America, I am convinced that these evils have been very much exaggerated. I cannot deny that athletics is expensive, and it would be foolish to maintain for a moment that it is not accompanied by abuses and evils—I can think of no other activity, not even religious activities, that is free from them—but in my experience as a director and supervisor of undergraduate activities it has seemed to me that nothing else has done so much as athletics to develop real college loyalty, to unify a heterogeneous undergraduate body, and by giving an outlet for youthful enthusiasm and youthful spirits, to aid in the maintenance of healthy college discipline. It is true that athletic contests have at times been the opportunity for undergraduate outbreaks and disturbances, but these occasions have on the whole been rare and not infrequently a case of "great cry and little wool," of wide newspaper publicity and relatively little foundation for the facts alleged. I am sure that if it were not for the athletic contests and the