Yale has began experimenting with such an instructional physical education program. Faculty members with interests in camping, hiking, moun- rain-climbing and even field ornithology are recruited to teach freshmen. "A voluntary program like this would be good," says Cutler. "Even if we did away with PT's, we could still have instruction in swimming and conservation."

All the Ivy League schools require athletics for freshmen. Dartmouth, Cornell and Columbia have a required program for sophomores as well. (Although Radcliffe dropped its requirement years ago, Cliffies must still pass a swimming test before graduation.)

Last spring, Dean Monro told the Committee on Houses that beginning this year, students will be excused from Harvard's swimming requirement if they "try hard" and are unable to pass.

Until his year, students who could not swim were graduated but not given a degree. Difficulties arose when businesses refused to hire these students. Non-swimmers plagued doctors and psychiatrists to be excused for chloride allergies on aquaphobia. One summa scholar supposedly spent the night before graduation trying to swim the IAB pool so that he might receive a Harvard diploma.

Two years ago, Monro relaxed the PT requirement -- from three hours a week to 30 hours over the entire semester, "Monro's reappraisals have made our program much more flexible," Cutler says. "The previous requirement of three PT's every week made it difficult to study before hour exams. We do have some problems with boys rushing to get PT's at the end of the semester, however."

This is an understatement. At the end of reading period, one-fourth of the freshman class had not fulfilled its physical training obligations.

"It's kind of a Mickey Mouse thing," complains a secretary in the Freshman Dean's Office. "We had to type up 340 warning letters to Freshman advisors. Most of the boys only had one or two more PT's to go."

Parker sends two warning letters each semester to delinquent freshmen. This year, he was also forced to extend the exam period deadline to February 1. Still some 40 freshmen failed to meet the PT requirement.

According to college rules, a freshman who doesn't fulfill the requirement has to get another 30 PT's during the first semester of his sophomore year. Actually, less than half of those who don't meet the requirement end up paying this penalty. Many are eventually excused because of term-time employment or "adjustment problems." Last fall, only 14 of 44 failures were ordered to repeat.

Word spreads quickly around the Yard that "cheap" PT's are available in swimming and skating. A student monitor in the IAB admits that many freshmen "hang on the side of the pool for a few minutes" to meet the hour requirement. Several freshman confess to signing in at Watson Rink and then walking out the back door with borrowed skates which do not even fit.

It is not unusual at intramural events to see freshmen signing PT cards for dorm-mates. Several young entrepreneurs sold extra credits last year. In 1955, a senior who had not fulfilled his PT requirement hired freshmen to sign him in at various events. All went well until he was married and told his new bride of this ingenious scheme. She demanded that he confess his sins at the PT Office. He finally settled down to 30 hours of physical training -- and a lifetime of marital bliss.

Freshmen with physical training difficulties eventually find their way to the PT Office. There they get aid and comfort from the secretary, Mrs. Margaret Phillips, who has been "Mrs. PT" to freshmen for the past eight years.

"Yes, I mother the boys," Mrs. Phillips admits. "A few freshmen get homesick and come in with some trumped up excuse just to be mothered. I always tell them not to let their PT's go until the last minute."

Since they are closest to the physical training program, Mrs. Phillips and part-time secretary Mrs. Sprague have their own arguments for retaining it. "Physical training gets boys out, of their little social cliques," says Mrs. Phillips. "It helps them meet other boys, and make some new friends."

"It also gets them away from their books," adds Mrs. Sprague. "Freshmen are the most serious class and they study much too hard. It's good to get them out-of-doors once in a while."

Not all freshmen see the value of this philosophy. "It's like making us go out with girls to keep us in shape socially," one freshman commented. "If it's so important, they should leave it up to us. They leave much more important things up to us.