Dartmouth needs sports

Nick Boke (“Union Vote gives Dartmouth room to dream,” March 14) is correct in suggesting that the attempt by Dartmouth College’s men’s basketball players to form a labor union offers an opportunity for the college to dramatically rethink the place of athletics in campus life. After all, if Dartmouth or any college objects to athletes as employees, it should refrain from treating them as employees. End off-campus recruiting of and admissions advantages for athletes; shorten the competitive seasons; arrange team practices around class schedules, not vice versa; and ensure that off-season training is purely voluntary. When athletic time demands are reasonable, athletes will be students, not employees.

Nevertheless, Boke incorrectly argues that Dartmouth can lower its athletic profile unilaterally and that it should do so by dropping all intercollegiate competition. Dartmouth is joined at the hip to the other seven members of the Ivy League — with whom it competes for students — so it could not drop varsity sports without sacrificing applicants, alumni support and the academic prominence that accompanies Ivy League membership. In college sports, as in international politics, unilateral disarmament is self-defeating. Besides, when operated on a modest scale, intercollegiate athletics teach valuable lessons in cooperation, preparation, self-discipline and time management that cannot be matched by intramurals, which are too low key.

Happily, though, the Ivy League could act collectively to make the changes suggested above, thereby benefiting athletes far more than a union ever could. Indeed, something similar occurred in 1956 when, after the NCAA legalized athletic scholarships, the Ivies declined to award any, a position they maintain today. The league could now leave the NCAA’s Division I, opting instead to compete in Division III with Amherst, Middlebury and similar institutions and be free of both player unions and the athletic excesses that Boke rightly criticizes. Kudos to him for seeing in the Dartmouth players’ unionization effort an opportunity to make college more about education and less about athletics.

Brian Porto

Windsor

Top schools limit athletics

Nicholas Boke hit the nail on the head (“Union vote gives Dartmouth room to dream,” March 14) when he suggests that Dartmouth (and indeed, all Ivy League schools) should downgrade or phase out most or all of their NCAA Division I sports programs. Such entertainments have become excessively expensive and controversial, and increasingly dominate the news, to the detriment of the college’s main purpose of academics and education.

Many of our best colleges and universities have in fact long since abandoned, or never had, most such “big time” entertainment. Witness MIT, Tufts, Williams, NYU, Chicago, CalTech, etc. They stress academics, but also support robust club activities for all students and some Division III sports.

Our country is virtually unique in having colleges and universities create and manage sports programs. Other countries have fine athletes and teams — witness Olympic results. But they are the products of private sports clubs and national associations. Academics and sports are considered separate activities. They do not mix.

Raymond Malley

Hanover

Critique of Israel
is not antisemitic

In his commentary (“There must be room for debate on Palestine,” March 12), Sami Saydjari highlighted the silencing that Palestinian supporters often face when they are labeled as antisemitic. It is not Islamophobic to call out human rights violations in Egypt or Iran, even though these countries, like Israel, have a state religion. Backers of Israel have a right to support Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land, the apartheid system of Palestinian oppression, and the mass killings of civilians in Gaza. They should not be labeled Islamophobic when they do. Nor should those of us who point out the irony of Palestinian ghettos in Israel be labeled as antisemites.

Scott Brown

Hanover