Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/185

 athlete I should as a disciplinary officer have a much harder time than I now have.

There is the argument that the athlete supports a sort of physical aristocracy which maintains a monopoly over athletics and physical exercise and makes it possible for the physically elect only to obtain the exercise that all need. We should develop a system, the promulgators of this argument say, which would force every one into athletic sports and secure regular and pleasant exercise daily for every one in college from the freshman to the President. Such a physical millennium sounds alluring, and the theory is beautiful, but the result is about as likely of attainment as those implied in the theories of our socialist friends; they sound attractive on paper, but they are impossible of realization. In every college with which I am familiar there is a predominating percentage of students and faculty who, unless a chain were put about their necks and they were dragged to the fray would take no part in athletic sports at all. There are even more than we might suppose who take no pleasure in exercise themselves and who find no relaxation in watching other people engaged in sports. Whatever can be done to interest students and faculty in sports generally, I believe is a desirable thing, but such interest is not decreased by the development of athletic teams. As I have seen the athlete his training is worth all that it costs—to him, to the college authorities, and to the undergraduate body as a whole, in the development of character, in discipline, in college loyalty, and in the binding together of the students as a whole.