Word: kurzman
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...Kurzman, writing with the unparalleled probity and insight of the National Inquirer, breathes the question "Is the rumor true?" regarding the special treatment of athletes at Harvard. Rumor? Kurzman obviously did a lot of legwork researching this editorial. Better meals? The Varsity Club training table abolished in 1969. Athletes eat the same meals as everyone else (although in much greater quantities). Tutoring, another perk Kurzman cites, is available to athletes only through the Study Council, the Writing Center, etc. While the employees of the Athletic Department are predominantly athletes, it also employs other students and senior citizens. Most athletes...
Aside from his distorted view of Harvard athletes, I am most offended by Kurzman's implications regarding the effects of intercollegiate athletics on the Harvard community. He contrasts the "frivolous" support of the student body for our athletic teams to the "non-frivolous" student activities undertaken by the remaining (presumably serious) students at this university. He rests on the unspoken truism that sports do little to enrich the spectator because they do not stimulate the mind. It is very hard to successfully argue the merits of football against ballet, hockey against drama, sweat against culture. I will not attempt...
Aside from the abstract merits of sports, I believe that there is nothing frivolous about students exhibiting enthusiastic support for their teams. Although it seems Kurzman would prefer that students continue to wallow in the self-absorbed reserve that permeates this campus, enthusiasm for athletics provides students with a needed release from the tensions of Harvard life. Damn his notion that such enthusiasm is "frivolous;" we're college students and we'll never have the opportunity to be frivolous again! If Kurzman believes there is no place for frivolity in the life of a serious intellectual then he has obviously...
...what has Kurzman said, in inimitable, eloquent style? He has criticized Harvard diversity by questioning the worthiness of athletes to attend this university. He has asserted that athletics are not of such a lofty nature as to deserve the attention of educated people (casting himself in the fold of Socrates dissatisfied). He lacks faith in the University to maintain its standards of integrity in its athletic program. But most importantly, he believes that the general student body is wrong to exhibit enthusiasm and spirit in support of their athletic teams. I, and my roommates who have cosigned this letter...
...both a die-hard Harvard hockey fan, and a critic of Harvard mystique, I was disturbed by Charles T. Kurzman's column, "Pointing the Big Finger" (Crimson, April...