p. 7 | Educated Brutality by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 49.

Educated Brutality.

By Editor

It is becoming more and more apparent that the principal aim of the university athletic clubs is by organization to promote brutality. In some recent notes from a certain university we read of the re-organization of the foot-ball club, and it was said that new men will take the places of those who have "preferred to retire on account of disabilities resulting from the double series of last year's games." Not long since while on a railroad train we heard some college students talking of their contests, and one of them told how he went on a certain occasion with a loaded cane, expecting to have a part in a college "rush," but for some reason he did not have an opportunity to use his murderous weapon.

The following from the Independent will give some idea of the point to which college athletics have now come. Its outspoken condemnation is just, and is richly deserved.

"Eleven big animals from Yale University and eleven big animals from Princeton College expressed their gratitude to God on Thanksgiving day for his mercies during the year, by such a beastly fight as ought to be prohibited by law and punished as the fights of the prize ring are punished. This is plain language, but it is none too strong. Let it be understood that we do not have the least objection to manly sport. We believe in it and would encourage it. But this is nothing of that sort. There is a game of foot-ball, or was, which was manly and healthful. It was a game of pluck and skill. The game as now conducted is only organized brutality. First there was a quarrel as to where the game should be played. This preliminary quarrel was so prolonged and bitter that it prepared the way for a contest which should not be a game but a fight full of animosity.

"Under the Rugby rules the ball is hardly kicked from the beginning to the end of the game, but is seized and carried, and the effort of the players is by all possible violence to take the ball from the player who holds it. He can be caught and pounded with the fists, thrown on the ground and stamped on with all one's fury. At Princeton on last Thanksgiving day it was well understood that there would be no mercy shown. The game, so called, was a slugging match. The brutes pounded and kicked each other, and that they did not kill each other was through no restraint, but by the mercy of God. One of the players was severely injured and had to be carried off the ground. It was an unmanly, degrading, beastly exhibition of malice and cruelty.

"Then after the contest the fights were continued whenever Yale and Princeton men came together in a drinking saloon or at a hotel bar. At one public room the proprietor had to turn off the gas to stop a fight. Of course there was gambling over the result. It is not foot-ball we object to, but such foot-ball; not games, but gambling; not contests, but drunkenness. Such games as this of last Thanksgiving day should be strictly forbidden by our colleges. They are a disgrace to a Christian university, not to say to a Christian age, and they would not be permitted to disgrace even the dirty streets and dens of Five Points. Shame on all those who participate in such at Princeton."