RALLIES

In their rally held just before the Yale game, the freshmen gathered in large numbers under the Union antlers, shouted with middlewestern vigor, and demonstrated an enthusiasm which bore tangible fruit in a 31-6 victory over Yale. As a result there have been suggestions that the pep meeting, having had such salutary effect upon the first year athletes, might well be repeated for the benefit of the varsity.

But despite this a posteriori testimonial of what youthful fervor can do, it is doubtful that a move to organize rallies for the varsity football team would meet with unbounded enthusiasm. Among the upperclassmen at Harvard there has for years existed an aversion toward those organized orgies which from a prelude to major athletic events in many an American institution of learning. The bonfire, the snake dance, and the night shirt parade are no doubt wholesome fun, but they are burdens which the scholastic atmosphere of Cambridge has long been spared. A terse crystallization of the local attitude toward such childish abracadabra, shared by team and student body alike, was given in the 1928-29 Athletic Report by Mr. Bingham, when he said that "more and more we are happily getting away from the too serious side of intercollegiate athletics. Mass meetings have become obsolete, and I hope we shall never return to these archaic customs.'

Since this statement was made in boom times, a sudden change in attitude toward mass meetings by the H.A.A. would seem inconsistent. Encouragement of noisy exhibitionism at the present time would only be construed as a desperate bid for increased financial support.