Two days after the Dartmouth victory set off a few firecrackers of football enthusiasm, a little-known but official student panel, the Undergraduate Ahletic Council, launched a small rocket of its own. The pronunciamento: starting with the Princeton game, four varsity athletes would replace four members of the eight-man cheerleading squad, and in future years all cheerleaders would be major letter-winners.

The present cheerleaders, who naturally looked forward to the Princeton and Yale games as the high points of their season, cried "foul" in violent indignation. After all, they said, they had put a good deal of practice and travelling time into the job. Now they were being fired without any previous warning, just before the two most important games of the year.

In outrage at the UAC's "dictatorial methods," they rejected the proposal that four of them stay on (and these four could be alternated from game to game). If any of them were to be forced out of their jobs, the whole squad would quit in a body. The Council promptly lined up four more athlete cheerleaders to take part in the Princeton game, and the disgruntled incumbents' show at the Penn game was their last.

Repeated Complaints Against Cheerers

However suddenly the word of dismissal came, this was a topic that has been brewing in the UAC for several years. The Council, which has direct control over all cheerleading affairs, has repeatedly complained that the cheerleading system is poorly organized; that there is no apparatus for carrying the squad over from year to year by drumming up interest in cheerleading; that the men who are enlisted are not always particularly interested or spirited; and there therefore their performance on the gridiron is often lackadaisical.

From alumni, moreover, came letters protesting the "buffoonery" of the cheerleaders' gymnastic stunts and expressing shock that the figure of John Harvard should be treated as an object of ridicule.

But for three years, UAC requests that the cheerleaders shake up their sytem and organize better have produced no results satisfying to the Council. This fall, apparently, the UAC decided that adjustments within the present system are impossible and thus prescribed the present change.

Yet there is more to this decision than mere dissatisfaction with the current cheerleaders' behavior and organization. Pretty clearly the Council hopes that its athlete-cheerleaders will command more support from the stands than even the most sedate and well-organized bunch of lay-cheerers. It believes that most undergraduate spectators will know by sight at least a few of the prominent athletes holding the megaphones, and will respond more eagerly to their urgings.

Uncertainties of New Plan

Certainly there is much to be said for this plan, at least as an experiment. No one can tell, of course, until it's tried, but possibly the sight of a Harvard letter-sweater and the familiar face of an athlete will inspire undergraduate lungs to more volume.

But it also could be argued that cheering is something no one really takes seriously, no matter who leads the "rahs," and that spectators would just as soon have a little comic relief during times-out. The Undergraduate Athletic Council may have overestimated the average Harvard fan's desire for Saturday afternoon decorum and the seriousness of his respect for athletes.

By far the most controversial aspect of the UAC's action, however, is its timing. Instead of waiting for the 1959 season to introduce its athlete-cheerleaders, the Council chose to plump them right into the middle of this fall's schedule. This is somewhat unfair to the present cheerleaders, who went out for the job with at least a tacit understanding that they would finish the season and had no forewarning of their sudden demise.

Council members admit that their decision is hard on the cheerleaders, but they clearly didn't make it with punishment or hard feelings in mind. They simply believe that a corps of athletes for next year's cheerleading could never be recruited and organized unless this year's UAC gets some experience at the job and goes through the possible embarrassment of breaking the ice on a new system.

Troubles May Increase

This dramatic mid-season shift, and the bitterness it has caused, may, however, have increased the troubles for the new system rather than eased them. In view of the unfairness to the present cheerleaders, and in view of the very tentative advantages of the UAC scheme itself, the Council might well have done better to wait half a year. And its new cheerleaders may agree when, with one week's practice, they man the megaphones for the first time in Palmer Stadium.