Word: reardon
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...John P. Reardon, director of athletics, decided this week he will sit down and chat with his coaches and minority athletes to discuss minority dissatisfaction with Harvard athletics...
...Reardon's decision came, just days after S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation, said that his group would begin an investigation this term of many student complaints he has heard about minorities and athletics. Reardon says he intends to try to set up a "constructive program" to deal with minority athletes' dissatisfaction "rather than operate on complaints...
...some minority students' complaints is that they deal with a highly subjective question, subtle bias. It would be difficult to quantify as subjective a quality as how much "encouragement" a coach gives different players. And while many minorities complain about being played less frequently in relation to their talents, Reardon points legitimately to the danger of second-guessing. Difficult decisions on playing time, he says, are exactly the coaches job. Almost as difficult is sifting through the complaints to find out which of the perceived biases are actually racial. A truism of varsity athletics is that no player feels...
...also important to acknowledge that this is a problem shared by most of the Ivy League. Reardon recalls that he went down to the Harvard-Princeton football game last week, and there were not many Blacks playing for Princeton either...
Counter and Reardon are to be lauded for looking into the question of minority participation in athletics. If numbers alone tell the tale, there are problems indeed. But one piece of alarming evidence should not preclude a thorough and serious investigation which explores all of the complexities of a very complex situation. Once they isolate the problems, the real work can begin...