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10 REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT

our institutions, a week before a game upon which depended a con-
ference title, broke his training pledge. His teammates, as members
of the Monogram Club, voted to report him and the coach dropped
him from the team. This key player dropped out of college before
his case came before the student council. His teammates, though
deeply hurt for their lost leader but reënforced from an inner
resource of honor and determination, won the Southern Conference
championship. The student leaders genuinely feel that the honor
principle must prevail in athletics as an educational part of college
life.

THE HONOR PRINCIPLE IN ATHLETICS

Without the illusions of the holier than thou attitude, we hold
that the athletes must stand on the same basis as other students in all
matters of honor, scholastic work, scholarships, fees, rooms, loans,
jobs, and any other financial aid. This simple principle of openness
and equality of opportunity for all students in the matter of financial
aid will basically decide the issue as to whether intercollegiate football
is to be a spectacular racket or a college sport. Those responsible for
policies of educational institutions should consider the effect on the
athletes themselves of being favored with advance promises of special
preferment with regard to scholarships, fees, loans, jobs, rooms,
board, and other financial aid. The sincerity of our intercollegiate
conference agreements is tested in the award by representative and
responsible faculty committees of all scholarships, loans, jobs, and
any other direct and indirect financial aid of the institution on a basis
open equally to all students. The genuineness of the athletic ideals of
the college can be more and more communicated to the alumni and the
students. We should consider the effect on the students in general of
being in institutions which sanction or connive at such so-called
legitimate violations of the letter of conference agreements and the
amateur spirit of college sports, not to mention the effect on educa-
tional institutions themselves in the very days of their surface prestige
and outer glory. Is student life to revolve mainly around a circus
subsidized and brought into the institutions or is it to center mainly
in the teachers, library, classrooms, laboratories, historic buildings,
shrines, trees, and flowers which are a part of the soil, the air, and
the spirit of the place?

In this matter of athletics the colleges and universities are all