On a recent Tuesday afternoon, eight WC students unaffiliated with any club or society attempted a friendly game of football on the small grassy field next to Harford Hall. Twenty minutes into the match Public Safety was calling a permanent time-out.
Admissions is quick to boast of 110 acres on campus (two on the waterfront) and a thirty-minute walking tour through campus leaves prospective students with an impression that unlike a city school, Washington College has room to enjoy. It isn't hard to imagine students lying out in the sun, throwing a Frisbee, and benefiting from recreational outdoor activity specific to the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
The open area is obviously there, but it's not for just any student with a football or a lacrosse stick. No one is allowed to do anything on the Harford field.
Cooperating with Public Safety's wishes to keep the fields open in case an official collegiate varsity team wants to spontaneously practice there (as opposed to the brand new $25 million stadium, the renovated LFC field house, or the plethora of space across the bridge), the offending students asked where they could play football before sunset.
Public Safety made a few calls and responded: students may only use the space on the campus green or any area between the dormitories.
The campus green looks beautiful and is a fantastic location for May Day or graduation, but the minute a student commits to engaging in physical activity on that sloping unkempt mossy hill they open themselves up to injury. The green not being conducive to pickup games: students are left with the mud pit of Kent circle or the tree-lined slivers of green around the quad.
The Athletic Department and Administration must respond to the reasonable needs presented by students whose healthy desire to remain active outdoors is squandered by greedy field controlling varsity coaches. All work and no play makes us regret not attending NYU-at least they have Central Park.
Peter Knox '06
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