Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/90

 86 One may wonder why these college authorities, with power to stop, consent to continuance of the conditions. Many reasons are given in justification, most of them purely evasive and absurd; but there is one argument which is regarded as final and unanswerable. These contests arouse college spirit among the students; they advertise the college; they awake enthusiasm among the alumni; an important contest receives elaborate notice on the sporting page which everybody reads, and the community learns that the college exists; a glee club swings around the circle of a score of towns and proves better for advertising than if the virtues of the college were blazoned on even Gibson posters adorning fifty miles of fences. No one was surprised to read a telegram one day in November last to the effect that the Association of Presidents of State Universities at its Washington meeting tabled 'a resolution—deploring the brutality, and waste of time resulting from the game [football] as now played.'

It may be said that, as a rule, parents are not only willing, but are also gratified, to find their sons prominent in these organizations; but the vast majority of parents know nothing about college work and they confide in the wisdom as well as in the integrity of the men to whom they have entrusted the education of their sons. There is no room for casuistry here. If a school of business should encourage students to glorify it by contests which might lead to paralysis of the right hand, or if a divinity school should provide opportunities for contests which might induce permanent injury to the voice, the press would comment at least unfavorably upon the wisdom of those in control. But technical schools, preparing men to be civil, mechanical or mining engineers, encourage their students to take part in football, though the authorities know that knees, ankles, shoulders and back are likely to be so injured as to handicap the man throughout life. This is no merely academic proposition, as is evident from the list of injuries reported officially in two institutions at the close of the 1905 season.

The recent discussions awakened by the increasing brutality of football tend to divert attention from other and far more important matters. Immense sums of money have been given for educational purposes, many times by men unfamiliar with college conditions but anxious to advance the good of their fellows in the most effective way. One can hardly imagine that they expected their money to be employed in the encouragement of semi-professional organizations and in developing the shirking propensities of young men. One may well ask if colleges are acting in good faith toward their benefactors, toward parents as well as toward the students themselves.

The college course covers four years and much is said about the necessity for shortening it; the technical courses cover four years and much is said about the necessity of lengthening them. The writer believes that the college course should cover four years and that four