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A Graduate's Opinion.

HOW THE DISMISSAL OF COL. BANCROFT IS VIEWED BY AN OLD BOATING MAN.

The undergraduate feeling in regard to the recent decisions of the Athletic Committee concerning the employment of Col. Bancroft is well known. We print to day a letter from a graduate, which recently appeared in the Sportsman. The writer says:

"That Harvard's faculty will never let athletics alone until they have worked some bad results for the college is quite evident. By drawing codes, issuing edicts, and making prohibitions they have kept themselves quite busy for the last year, and disgusted the students and everybody else who feels any interest in the college. Their last decision, with reference to the employment of Mr. Bancroft. Seems to be the most absurd and inconsistent of all their rulings. And the reasons for it are so perfectly patent that the men who have lent their services in securing it are lowered in the estimation of all acquainted with the facts.

Mr. Bancroft as an oarsman is well known. Whatever success Harvard has had for the last eight years in boating is wholly due to him. He has devoted much of his valuable time, year after year, to coaching various crews. With what success this has been done is readily seen by consulting the record of Harvard since 1876. Mr. Bancroft is a graduate of the college, has occupied and does now occupy important positions in public life. The undergraduates are enthusiastically in favor of him as a coach, as is every man who has to do with boating in the college. A loss of his services at this time will work irreparable damage to boating. Every interest of that branch of Athletics at Harvard demands that the captain of the crew be allowed to find his own coach, and that the Faculty Committee busy themselves with their more immediate business.

The committee which now begins to sit like a high court of chancery, and issue injunctions against every department of athletics, now asserts on the argument of the Advisory Committee of the graduates, that Mr. Bancroft cannot be had as coach for the crew.

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