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COLLEGE SPORTS.
THE limited time which students have had since their return from the summer vacation to indulge in their favorite pastimes, has not been productive of any achievements worthy of special mention. Many noted athletes were graduated in the class of ’88, and the Freshmen have hardly had the opportunity to show their mettle. To be sure, those semi-barbarous struggles known as rushes have taken place, and in many cases sophomoric dignity has had to suffer from freshman zeal, but such practices are frowned upon by college authorities and upper classmen. Very often serious injuries are inflicted, and what good is accomplished? None whatever. Want of organization always seriously interferes with the success of the new comers, and the frantic struggle, continued often for hours, to gain possession of and hold a two-foot cane can scarcely be called sport. Much better, because more satisfactory, are the class games of baseball and football. Here the freshmen are not so handicapped, because many of the men who go to college have received excellent preliminary training in the preparatory schools, and furthermore, these contests develop material for the college teams. Thus class feeling serves to call attention to and bring out men who can reflect honor to the college they represent in intercollegiate sports. A word with regard to these.
It is the opinion of many noted educators that such contests are detrimental to good scholarship. In the first place, the few who participate in them do not fairly represent the athletic development of their respective colleges. The majority of students, after a week or two of enthusiasm for sport immediately after college has begun, do not go near the gymnasium, and can hardly be said to take any interest in sport at all. Again, it is claimed that when the time for the holding of these contests approaches, studies are neglected, because interests centre in the success of the teams.
The readers of OUTING will be interested to learn the result of an investigation recently made at Cornell of the records of men who engaged in intercollegiate sports since the opening of the college. The result showed that the average scholarship of each man who rowed in the crews was 70 per cent., that of baseball players 73 per cent., and that of track athletes 76 per cent., a standard of 70 per cent. being necessary to graduate: 54 per cent. of all these men graduated, which is 7 per cent. above the University percentage of graduation. According to these figures, general scholarship does not suffer from intercollegiate contests, provided they are kept within reasonable limits. The standing in scholarship of noted athletes from Yale, Harvard and Princeton also shows that they are not strangers to hard study, while many of them are honor men and the winners of prizes in special departments of study.
J. C. GERNDT.
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DOG CHAT.
THE present year will ever be memorable in the history of American “dogdom.” In it the battle between the American Kennel Club and its opponents has been inaugurated. The enforcement of “compulsory registration” in the American Kennel Club Stud Book, finally aroused the long suppressed popular indignation at the manifest incompetency of that body to administer its self-assumed control of kennel matters. The club’s action was, however, in a measure sustained by the brilliant success of the Westminster Kennel Club’s show, which was selected as the lists in which the initial contest of the rival factions was to be fought. So far, so good, for the A. K. C.
THE dog breeders and exhibitors of America, however, have long felt that a body composed of individuals was necessary for the proper guidance of the kennel affairs of the continent, and to guard their interests. The American Kennel Club is a club composed of clubs. The local clubs are almost entirely made up of “dog lovers,” so called—men who own perhaps but one dog, many of them none, and who are utterly ignorant of dog matters in general, with perhaps one or two “prominent” dog-men who hold the reins of power. It will be seen, therefore, that as these few individuals are able to use the club name and influence, should they wish it, in the furtherance of their private ends, a dangerous amount of power is placed in their hands. The large majority of our leading breeders were unattached, many of them living at long distances from the headquarters of local clubs. They were, therefore, without representation in the government of matters canine. To remedy this evil and for the protection of breeders—the A. K. C. having exhibited a criminal want of concern in their interests—the National Dog Club was formed.