The Solution

While The Game of Life paints a largely negative picture of the role of athletes on collegiate campuses, another influential book—Harvard Professor of Education Richard Light’s Making The Most Out of College—offers a different perspective after interviewing students at 20 different colleges. Light concludes that athletes as a whole are happier than the average student.

While Orleans says that he thinks most Ivy League policy makers have read—or at least heard of—these two books, they do not play a significant role in the debate.

“It would be mistaken to take [The Game of Life] as gospel,” Orleans says.

Orleans says athletic directors have been discussing these issues long before the books hit the shelves. He adds, however, that Light’s study has added to the debate by saying, “let’s ask students what they think and then let’s value that answer.”

Light’s characterization of athletes as “happier” than the rest of the student body is one that Harvard players strongly accept.

Reducing the number of recruited athletes at Harvard, according to Gates, would stifle the social life.

“I believe it would…kill the social scene—or what exists of it,” she says. “Athletes bring a high degree of normality to the Harvard community in that they are the most well-rounded and socially functioning people at Harvard.”

The Debate

Harvard seems to be lining up unanimously against reducing the number of recruited football players from 35 to 25.

Lewis believes that cutting the numbers will not solve the intensity problem and will only increase pressure on the few athletes that remain to be “the gladiators for Harvard.”

Athletic Director Robert L. Scalise, who will be attending his first spring Ivy athletic directors’ meeting, has cautioned that such a cut would effectively eliminate the junior varsity football program. He says this would go against Harvard’s athletic mission to provide opportunities to all students.

In an interview in April, Scalise warned that simplistic moves like cutting numbers of recruits would have “unintended consequences” that have to be considered.

Members of the football team are also adamantly opposed to any tinkering with recruiting numbers.

“It would be a shame to reduce the number of recruited athletes. I think they are some of the most dynamic people I have ever known,” quarterback Neil T. Rose ’02-’03 writes in an e-mail. “How many prominent citizens, businessmen and leaders out there were Ivy League athletes? Those who think Harvard should limit recruiting probably don’t know many athletes very well.”