According to the quick, unstrained, and often exciting method of thinking--that of pigeon-holing and generalizations--Harvard is composed of three types: intellectuals, playboys, and jocks.

This is a horrifying reality to many people.

Nevertheless, all three are accepted categorical stereotypes which have been transferred from the quiet, naive, visually impressionable high school mind to the dinner table conversations in the Union and Houses. They are everyday terms used throughout the College to describe members of the undergraduate body.

The first is the intense young individual who values ideas and comments on academic problems with such insight and cleverness that he forgets to shave or wash. He is a grind and a recluse; he rots in Widener. The second is the companion of wine, women, and money. He talks it over in the Club in his oval-shaped Brooks Brothers suit. The third is the anti-intellectual slob--the animal. He grunts and sweats in Briggs Cage.

These are the men of Harvard--all here for an education, yet quite distinct in their stress of the academic, social, or athletic life.

Many observers in Cambridge believe that all Harvard men should be "intellectual." They point out that the "playboy" is a dying cause that went out with the Gold Coast and postwar Radcliffe, and crusade to exterminate the last real menace to the Harvard community, the "jock." He's a crude, embarrassingly inept social thing in an HAA sweat shirt--a C student at best, these people maintain, as they request more scholarly replacements to beef up the total intellectual output of the College. The most common disagreement is with the admissions policies of the University, which, they say, "have been guilty of admitting too many jocks."

The athlete, like the businessman, has evolved an image that a large nucleus of aspiring undergraduates and section men find fashionable to accept, avoid, and ridicule. They break down the Harvard community into "intellectuals" and "jocks"--heroes and villians--and force the athlete into a corner where he must ultimately explain himself.

This, unfortunately, seems to be part of the role of the athlete at Harvard--self-justification and disproof of the animal image--thrust upon him by a large number of his athletically apathetic and often cynical classmates. There is a definite tendency among the undergraduates and certain instructors almost self-consciously to separate the students into the two types, and, for those who want to be identified with the "intellectuals," to look down on the uncultured "jock." Although they may find this fun, they often take themselves seriously: certainly their attitude is immature and unfair, and more than likely results from a spirit of competition or a search for a source of prestige, or sometimes from jealousy. (The case is the frustrated athlete.)

Two Camps?

But in any discussion of the athlete at Harvard, one must first question the basic assumption--that the College is compoesd of two separate camps--animals and artists. "It has never seemed a useful distinction to me to divide the undergraduate body into athletes and non-athletes, as though these were discrete branches of the human species," according to David E. Owen, Master of Winthrop House. "Whether or not a man plays a varsity sport has little to do with his intellectual abilities and interests or his qualities as a social being."

Owen was asked what he thought about the popular distinction between the "intellectual" and the "jock" at Harvard. "Rather than that, let's make the distinction between the jock and the athlete," he replied, insisting that the implications of the loaded term "jock" unduly smear many valuable citizens and serious students who happen to participate in athletics. Only a handful of students qualify for the unattractive term "jock," Owen noted, declaring that too many gentlemen get lumped together and become identified with the reputations and actions of the few--a strikingly small minority. "I suppose there are a few students who never should have been admitted," Wilbur J. Bender '27, former Dean of Admissions, said in an interview. "But they are very rare indeed."

"I don't like the word jock," Bender continued. "It is unfair and unjustified. It implies thickheadedness and a segregated group of misfits, and improperly labels a lot of good people."

The athlete at Harvard may be part of a distinct group of students, but he should not be accepted or considered as part of an inferior group of students. All kinds of awards, scholarships, and statistics could serve as witnesses in this argument. The first four class Marshals last year, for example--Charlie Ravenel, Newell Flather, Tom Blodgett, and Bruce MacIntyre--are all outstanding personalities who participated in athletics.

If the reader regards the Class Marshal elections as mere popularity contests, he should take note of a statistical study made in 1954 on the percentage of distribution among various rank list groups of undergraduates and selected student and alumni groups. The two athletic organizations studied, the crews and varsity football, placed nobody in Group I--but neither did the CRIMSON nor the Student Council. The athletes had a smaller percentage of their students in Group II, but they had essentially the same percentage displacement (approximately 75 per cent) in Groups III, IV, and V, as did the others, including the Corporation, Overseers and Alumni Directors; the University Choir and Glee Club; and the whole undergraduate body in addition to the CRIMSON and Council.

Not Inferior Students