"There is a tendency for students to wall themselves off into separte groups in terms of their own sets of prejudices and interests," Bender admitted, generalizing on the various group personalities he has observed: "My general impression is that boys with athletic abilities and interests tend to be more broad-minded and have a greater breadth of interests than members of other groups. The self-conscious intellectuals, for example, tend to be more narrow and restricted in their interests, and are usually more arrogant in their approach to problems than are the athletes.
"My guess is that the whole group of varsity letter winners is less cohesive than, say, the dramatists or the CRIMSON editors," he said. About the 700-odd freshmen and varsity letter winners who make up about 1/6th of the College, Bender remarked: "They would probably represent a good cross-section of the whole class."
Bender's favorite example of athletic importance is that of the University of Chicago, which eliminated its athletic programs just before the war in an all-out effort for intellectual progress. "Afterward," Bender points out, "they found out that the intellectuals, in quotes, were not really as smart as they thought and that the non-intellectuals, in quotes, were really quite valuable after all." Their experiment resulted in a lop-sided student body of "narrow intellectuals," and the school's appeal declined so much that five years ago the administration had trouble finding enough students to fill its quotas.
The athletes may be primarily B and C students, (so are the majority of the undergraduates at Harvard), but they are not an inferior element or a hindrance to the college community, as the University of Chicago experiment showed.
Partly as a result of the "shining example" of the Chicago experiment, and partly from his own experience, Bender is led to make comments such as "The A student is very often quite stupid," and, "An awful lot of thick and narrow students grind out A's.
"It doesn't follow that the C students are brilliant," he added, "but they are vitally necessary. For example, during my time, most of the men who became great contributors to society had highly undistinguished records at Harvard."
Who, then, is the athlete at Harvard? He's not always the Group I or II student, nor is he the Group VI hanger-on. He may be one of the students in the 550-650 range in the SAT's who swung the admissions committee over to his side by favorable extra-curricular abilities, as do members of the Glee Club, band, Crimson, also. He may be a gentleman, and he may be socially ungraceful. "Harvard is a mixed bag," Bender noted quite keenly: "You can say almost anything, cite examples, and prove it."
What can be said about the athlete at Harvard with reasonable assurance is that he is not motivated by images of glory and heroism. There are no campus heroes around Cambridge; graduating with honors is valued higher than winning a letter and beating Yale.
"The real question in my mind is the basic value of athletics," Bender said. "What are the athletic programs worth, in terms of our expenditures and the students' interests." Undeniably, Harvard never admits students because it wants their bodies rather than their minds, and it never encourages inordinate athletic activity by offering easy programs such as Physical Education.
What, then, keeps the athlete at Harvard going?
Some quit. They are frequently high school standouts from the Mid-west who always thought of colleges in terms of football teams, and who come to Harvard--a new horizon. They find the exciting display of academic purpose too inviting.
A second type waxes in athletic ability and interest while he is here, as did the sparky fullback from Cherokee, Iowa, Jim Nelson. Called "crazy-legs" because he ran in what appeared to be an awkward manner in his freshman and sophomore years, Nelson last fall was billed as the man who went "from stand-in to standout." At the end of the season he won the New England senior football award.
A third type of athlete at Harvard never dies. He is the Charlie Ravenel or the Mark Mullin, who just keeps going ahead in athletics with an interminable drive, determination, and winning enthusiasm for his sport all the way through school. To these people, athletics is a way of life. "My whole life has centered around athletics," Revenel said recently. "I owe everything to sports." He is the first Class Marshal this year, has received a $5,000 scholarship from Corning Glass Company to travel around the world, has been named co-recipient of the Bingham Award for this year, and has been admitted into Harvard Business School. That's a lot to owe to sports.
Ravenel played football because he had the feeling that "It was what I was meant to do," because he loved the game, and because he wanted to keep his body in shape. Of course, the memorable quarterback who also plays baseball wanted to win, also. Some athletes play for headlines, others use athletics for self-discipline and private goals of accomplishment, agreeing with President Kennedy '40 that the health of the mind is directly proportional to the health of the body. Still others play because they want it on their record for graduate school. And then there are some who participate because they need a place to vent rage and frustrations. Every man has his own reason.
But anti-jockism at Harvard is as bad as anti-intellectualism; neither type of personality under attack really exists per se at Harvard, and there is no reason why a varsity athlete can't dispel the erroneous triad of stero-types by joining a final club and getting A's. To those who ask "What the hell are you doing down at that wet, muddy field with a bunch of robot-animals when you could be expanding your knowledge by reading or studying?" the athlete can reply "Accumulating a college experience" with as much validity and pride as a member of the CRIMSON, Glee Club, or Student Council.
"Harvard probably has more screwed-up oddballs then any other College," Bender declared, adding parenthetically that he would "hate to see it without any, however."
The athletes don't apply, Bender asserts: "If the term 'jock' can seriously be used at Harvard, then something should be done. At present, I don't think it is a term that can be used."