Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 82, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1911 — MAROON IN SHARP CRITICISM [ARTICLE]

MAROON IN SHARP CRITICISM

Chicago University Is Charged With Proselyting for Btudents With Records as Athletes. 4 Severe criticism of the athletic department of the University ot Chicago are made by the Daily Maroon, the undergraduate newspaper of the institution, in a recent issue. In addition to charging the university with proselyting for students with records in athletics, the Maroon attacks intercollegiate athletics In generaL • ; ' / Some of the,charges are: Candidates for the football team are kept at work bo long that they cannot make even a pretense of studying. Students enter the university largely because of the opportunity of exercising their athletic prowess. That 99 per cent of the students take no part In athletics except to shriek from the bleachers. That those 99 per cent have an Insane desire to win and do not honor any team which falls to come home with the spoils. That the remaining one per cent which takes part In athletics is physically injured by the exercise involved. These things explain, the article maintains, why “college alumni are hot taking the active part in the affairs of the country they should” and account for “the commercial and political dishonesty that furnishes yrork for grand juries and the senate committees and the jailers. “Not even the mo9t enthusiastic supporter of interbolleglate athletics can assert that it is a genuinely student activity,” the editorial says. “It consists in ensnaring into college by spectacular methods students who have alestablished athletic records in preparatory schools. Little attempt Is made to conceal the fact that these students enter the university largely because of the opportunity of exercising their athletic prowess. “One per cent of the student body specialises in athletics, while the other 99 per cent sits on the bleachers and gives vent to primitive shrieks. "Athletics Is today too much of a business. Its only object Is victory. "Can anybody maintain that athletes can even make a pretense of studying when they are kept out on the athletic field from three o’clock to seven and eight o’clock at night? Can a student arising from a hastily eaten meal at 8:30 in the evening be expected to put forth any serious intellectual effort when be has been battered around on the football field for four or five hours?”