Cornell's Ivy hockey champions attracted Watson Rink's only sellout crowd last season, but the Big Red's 1967 visit tomorrow night, coming on a midweek holiday, may not draw a similar audience. That would leave the B.C.-Harvard game in January as this season's only full house (out of nine dates). Watson is not one of the bigger college rinks, but for some reason--be it Harvard sports spectator apathy, the long cold walk across the Larz Anderson Bridge, or the departure of Gene Kinasewich and Eastern supremacy it is also one of the emptiest. The average attendance last year was less than a thousand, and this year it is even lower.

Given this situation, the present student ticket policy is an anachronism. Unlike every other sport at Harvard, presentation of a coupon at the door is insufficient for admission. Only for the two big football games each year does a student have to exchange his coupon beforehand for a ticket, but they are assured sellouts, and seating poses a problem that doesn't exist for 89 per cent of the hockey games.

There's no reason why it should be especially hard to see a hockey game, why a student who changes his mind or plans after 5 p.m. Friday can't see his own college team without paying $2. The players are denied a home-ice advantage when supporters of the visiting team out-cheer the local folks, as happened in the Brown game here this December. Harvard spectators are seldom vocal, and we appreciate this aspect of the image as much as anyone, but this reserve necessitates the presence of a greater quantity of Crimson rooters to fill the air with the proper hum of bias.

The present policy is the result of deliberations between the Faculty Committee on Athletics and an undergraduate council several years ago when attendance statistics were far different. Sometime between tomorrow's Cornell game, (the season's finale in Watson,) and the opening of the 1967-68 season, the Faculty Committee should reevaluate a situation which keeps a number of students, each game from watching the Harvard hockey team.

The JV hockey players flew to Philadelphia Saturday and beat the Penn varsity, 6-3, before a crowd conservatively estimated at 10,000. Penn next year enters the Ivy League and many think the Quakers will replace Dartmouth as the league's soft touch.

But not one of Mr. Hutch's proud JV, who evaluated Penn and decided the Quakers probably would have won if they'd played the Harvard varsity.