When the snow begins to fall the crew takes to Weld Boathouse, and the ski team heads for the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire.

Skiing, unlike crew, which requires many long hours of strenuous practice, is a fairly easy sport to learn. The basic thing to remember is that one should always ski down a hill, because when you row up a hill, you have to go against the current. The crew member already knows this, of course, because his rowing practice all fall has taught him to keep his knees bent, his back arched in a straight line, and his head down as he strokes.

But however rewarding crew may be as a sport, many important advantages accrue to the ski enthusiast. Surrounded by snow, with the cold wind whipping across his face, ski poles in hand and poised to make the suicide slalom run, he suddenly realizes that he is a member of a team. There is togetherness and camaraderie in skiing; Men against Nature, the spirit of conquest, adventure and the Great Outdoors.

No doubt the crew member feels something akin to the skier's togetherness, knowing that he is huddled in the warm confines of the boathouse, that so long as the Charles flows there will always be a Harvard crew, and that when the shells again take to the river next spring, people will stand on the banks in the sunlight and cheer.

Pity the poor skier who faces life without that sense of inevitability, without knowing whether or not there will be a ski team next year. The constant terror of non-existence is ever before him.

But the skier is not alone in his anxiety; there are others of the athletically inclined who share his fear and trembling. At any moment the University may turn against their sport, withdraw its funds, demote its standing. And to an ever increasing extent, this is happening.

Small sports, individualistic sports, participant-oriented rather than spectator-oriented sports, are marginal. They do not pay for themselves financially. Few alumni come to their aid, and public opinion squeezes them out of consideration. In the hard and tumble world where everything is up or out, they must be written off the University's ledgers, and consigned to a limbo where "those who are interested" may go.

Not so with crew, because crew is an old and traditional sport; it is contained within the multitudes of the meaning of Harvard. And besides, it has an overwhelming reserve of alumni financial support. All of which does to prove, of course, that the University has learned that it's easier to ski down a hill than to row up a hill against the current.