The vote of the Advisory Board on Debating, which reduces Faculty coaching of the intercollegiate debating teams to a minimum, brings out a marked in equality in the conditions which exist at Harvard and Yale in the preparation of a team for joint debate.

Harvard holds that the aid given to debaters by Faculty members should be limited to the suggestion of references to material and to the giving of information and assistance of the most general kind. From the references and material thus given them, in addition to that of their own collecting, the debaters are then to work out their own lines of argument and plans of presentation.

At Yale, however, the practice of giving Faculty assistance to the debaters is carried to its extreme. Their Faculty members may not only furnish references to works on the subject chosen and give material and information, but may criticize the speeches of the debaters, change and amend their arguments and general plan of debate, and even select a team of Faculty members to actually debate with the student team, and lecture to them on the subject chosen for debate. Yale graduates, not connected with the university, who have become authorities on the question for discussion, may also come to New Haven and coach for as long a time as they see fit.

This practice of Faculty coaching, Harvard believes, leads to a perversion of the purpose of the debates. With unlimited Faculty assistance the student speakers become mere mouthpieces through which the Faculty is heard and the debate developes into a contest between the Faculties of the two universities, not between the students. It is as if in an intercollegiate chess match each member of the two teams should have behind his chair an expert chess player to plan his moves for him; and he himself should do nothing but move the pieces from one square to another.

There is of course no agreement between the two universities covering this point. There is therefore nothing to do but go ahead on the very unequal footing now existing. But it is sincerely to be hoped that, if the debates are to continue, some arrangement may be made by which the conditions of preparation shall be squalized.