*The sprawling Harvard Club of Minnesota is widely recognized as one of the most efficient alumni groups in the country. D. Donald Peddie '41, the guiding light of the Club, said, "I like to think I'm doing for Minnesota what Bob Blackman of Dartmouth is doing for the whole country.... He hears of guys, tracks them down, and holds on." Blackman, of course, is one of the most forward athletic recruiters in the business.
Mall Order Campaign
Peddie conducts a mail-order campaign, concentrating to a great extent on athletes: "We use an annual report on Minnesota boys at Harvard to get a foot in the door.... We send it to the boys we have tips on, and then sit back and wait for a nibble," he said last spring. If a boy responds with so much as a thank-you, Peddie said, "We tell the school that so-and-so has expressed an interest in us, which is literally true, even if exaggerated."
There are many other similar examples, far too many to enumerate. When you have alumni doing the admissions work, you're going to have recruiting of athletes. Ohio State and Harvard alumni are pretty hard to tell apart, once they've graduated.
It is totally unrealistic to maintain that Harvard does not recruit, that its alumni do not in fact value athletic ability over other talents. In the past week, two high Administration officials have privately admitted that the College is not true-blue in this respect. And yet, if there should be shame attached to these facts, it should not arise from the premise that recruiting is evil--although perhaps it is. The guilt is that Harvard continues to proclaim its innocence publicly, as in Mr. Barnaby's letter.
This is not to say Harvard should or should not recruit. Rather, it is to suggest that honesty be adopted as a policy for running an athletic program. It is to request that Harvard stop excusing below-par performances by its teams by saying it can't recruit. Of course, admission to Harvard requires intelligence; but there is no immediately evident proof that smart athletes are worse than dumb ones.