A faculty committee, consisting of President Eliot and Professors Gurney, Pierce, Shaler, J. W. White and Mr. Preble, meet this afternoon in conference with a committee of invited students consisting of six from each class to discuss the question of athletic sports in colleges. What practical results, if any, we may expect from this, conference it would not now be profitable to conjecture. There is in fact only one result that we can definitely hope for from such a meeting and that result certainly we have a right to expect. It is that the faculty will through the committee give some definite idea of what its policy in the matter of college sports at present is or is likely to become in the future. As to this question at present the college is in the profoundest doubt. The passage on the subject in President Eliot's recent annual report is far from satisfactory as an expression of such policy. It is in many points vague and noncommttal, and can fairly in part be termed a special pleading. It criticizes without suggesting a remedy, unless by implication we take it to advocate the total abolition of inter-collegiate contests as a remedy. If this report is unsatisfactory in these respects how much more so has been the course and the various utterances of the faculty committee on athletics as an indication of the policy of the faculty. The course of this committee, it is with regret that we say it, has more than once been marked by inconsistency and disingenuousness.

It is therefore, we would respectfully urge, high time that some authoritative definition of the policy of the faculty be put before the students so that hereafter they may know what regulatious or changes to expect from the faculty, and may not again, as has once been the case, have this sense of justice and fair play outraged by the sudden adoption of any restriction by the faculty without fair notice. We would also certainly hope that as a result of this conference more cordial and less distrustful relations may be brought about between the faculty and the students. But this can hardly be unless the former will abandon its present policy of secrecy and inconsistency and will definitely outline its course at least so far as directly concerns the latter. The students of Harvard stand ready to co-operate with the faculty in any just and reasonable reform the latter may desire to make in the matter of athletic sports. Their only request is that they be definitely informed what changes are proposed.