The Board of Overseers have at last taken action upon the majority and minority reports made by the Committee. Their action seems to us in the highest degree narrow-minded, and marks a strong check to the liberal tendency which should prevail in a great university like Harvard. Their recommendation amounts, in substance, to simply this: To prohibit all freshman intercollegiate contests in baseball, football, rowing and lacrosse; to allow none but University teams to engage in intercollegiate contests, and those only with Yale and minor New England college, thus barring out Columbia, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and others; and to prohibit the nine, football, lacrosse team and cricket eleven from engaging in any contests-even practice games if they keep to the letter of their recommendation-except with other Harvard organizations on any week-day except Saturday and holidays.

In other words the Board of Overseers wish to put such restrictions upon us as practically to do away with all contests with outsiders. They think they have found the best way to accomplish this; but if they think that such a scheme will promote the cause of general athletics and materially lessen the evils which they imagine arise from intercollegiate contests, we venture to say they will find they are mistaken. It they wish to reduce Harvard University to the level of a boarding school and treat the students as mere striplings, well and good; but we are inclined to think the boarding school would scarcely be as well attended as the liberal university. To be consistent, they should return to the old system of locking the doors of the dormitories at ten o'clock every night, and resuscitate the other petty rules of thirty years ago. They are opposing the almost unanimous opinions of the undergraduates, and even the views of the graduates-so well represented by Mr. R. H. Dana-are disregarded and laid upon the table.

The Overseers wish to confine our intercollegiate contests to those with Yale alone; but do they imagine that our teams, lacking practice and lacking spirit, can do much against a well-trained, practiced team from New Haven? It may be the wisest policy for our governing bodies to attempt to antagonize the students, but it is not in accordance with the spirit which has prevailed here in the last two decades, and it is subjecting the welfare of Harvard University to a great and imminent risk.

The faculty, as a body is more liberal. We can scarcely believe that they would entertain such a monstrous proposition as that made by the Overseers. Such a radical change in the whole athletic system would, we firmly believe, put the axe to the roots of our social system as well. The motto of the Overseers has been "Moderation," but what could be more extreme than this scheme? We can only trust to the liberality and sound judgment of the members of our faculty to prevent its being put into force. If it is put into force, however, the students will have something to say on the subject.