Date: 26 Nov 2002 03:07:36 EST

From: John Charles Turner

Subject: on character

To: Joann Harper

Cc: James E. Wright

 

Hi Josie, how's it going? I'm one of the football players that came

over to your house to help you move over the summer, and I'm sure

you're getting a lot of these blitzes, but as an athlete I feel that

it's important for me and who I am as a person to not just turn a blind

eye to the current issue at hand, with the whole swimming and diving

teams being cut. I understand how money is tight and the college is

making cuts everywhere and I'm sure there's a lot of pressure to cut

wherever you can.

And with everything that's been going on with football, I thought

a lot about why we play or how we play. And I thought about what the

character of the team is, and how that character is reflected by how we

play. There's a popular quote about character that says, "Character is

what you do when nobody is watching." And I thought about that, and

asked myself, How would we play if nobody showed up to our games. If

there wasn't any Ivy League Championship to be won, if nobody wrote

articles about our games, if there wasn't so much fanfare about

football, if the coaches weren't under so much pressure to win, if they

didn't have to worry about losing their jobs, if nobody kept track of

records, and history. I thought to myself, what if we just went around

playing teams in big open fields, how would we play? Would we still

care so much about winning. I really believe we would.

Because the reality is that students here play their sport because

they want to, they don't have to do it, they can quit whenever they

want, as has the majority of the '03 football players have demonstrated

over the last several years. And what keeps me going after every

losing season piles on top of the former, is not how many people attend

our games, or how many tickets are sold, or the "tradition of Dartmouth

football," or the alumni support. What keeps me going is my character,

and the character of my teammates. And the character of my coaches is

important too, but one learns quickly that if you play with the hope of

being praised by your coaches, you will find yourself a miserable

person because you are playing for the wrong reasons. This character

includes a love for our sport and all that it entails, and we mold our

college life around our sport, we put everything second to our sport,

we shape our lifestyle to match our sport, because of our character, a

character that we have built over the course of our life thus far, a

character built on commitment, dedication, friendship, hard work,

love. And we give so much of ourselves for each other and for our

coaches and for our sport. We train year round, we get up at early

hours in the morning, we travel hours by the metro in foreign countries

just to be able to run and lift for a couple hours a day while on our

LSAs or FSPs, we train by ourselves when home, when we could easily

just not do it, and nobody would know.

But we do it nonetheless, because we have made a commitment,

because we aren't the type of people to quit when we are losing, to

quit when our grades are suffering, to quit when times are tough, to

quit because we need to get a job to help pay for books. We are the

type of people, the ones that haven't quit anyways, that maintain our

commitment, that work harder because we want to win, to make it work

when our grades are hurting, who get jobs anyways despite the pressures

not to. We are the people that find a way to make it work. And if you

want to talk about money, it's not easy to attend a school that costs

$35,000 a year, I can't imagine how my parents come up with that sort

of money, I'm not on financial aid, apparently the school believes my

parents should sell all our house to pay for my education. But even

for those students that are on financial aid, it still isn't easy for

their parents to come up with the money. And we aren't getting

scholarships to play here. Our parents have seen the love we have for

our sport and for knowledge, and they are willing to find a way to make

it work, to go the extra mile, because they love us. They value our

character, our willingness to not give up, to make due, to find a way.

And when we decided to go to this school, when our coaches supported us

with admissions, we made a commitment to our sport, to our team, to

Dartmouth College that we would find a way over the next four years to

play football, to row crew, to swim, or to dive. We made a commitment

without knowing what lay before us or the hardships that we might

face. But we weren't the only ones that made a commitment. Our

coaches made a commitment that they would be dedicated to winning and

putting us in the best possible position to do just that, and Dartmouth

College made a commitment that it would be there for us, that it would

admit us into this school because Dartmouth is proud of us, is proud of

our character, and our aims at success, and our work ethic. And

whether it was you or the athletic director before you, a commitment

was made to do everything in your power to maintain this varsity forum

that we have dedicated so much of our lives to.

I don't know if you've ever noticed it, but as you walk into the

front of the gym, there's a plaque on the wall to the left that says

something about the gym and when it was built, but in big letters, it

reads "Dedicated to building Manhood within the College." And since

then this has evolved into including Womanhood. But if you look at

that, it says right there, that athletics is very important to the

College and to the development of the character that Dartmouth is so

proud of. Because Dartmouth is nothing without its students, and the

character of the College is built on the Character of it's students,

faculty and staff.

I also must ask the question of why you would choose the Swimming

and Diving teams, if it's so important to save money, why don't you

just cut all the varsity teams. Why not just cut the whole program, why

even have sports at all. I mean we haven't had a winning football

season forever, why don't you cut football? Maybe it's easier to cut

swimming because nobody shows up to their meets and the alumni support

is probably a lot weaker than that of football. And their facilities

are falling apart, and perhaps they aren't the most successful program,

I don't know, I personally am not that big of a fan of swimming and

diving. But I am a fan of the athletes, who value the same things that

I value, who work as hard as I do, who have made the same commitment,

who feel so betrayed as do all of us by this decision.

This decision says a lot about the character of the College, it

makes you (in the collective sense) no better than the guys that quit

our team, the guys that for whatever reason, they all have a reason,

felt that they should quit. Perhaps it was to salvage the rest of their

lives, perhaps they just didn't feel they had any heart left for it.

Who knows? And now you are quitting too, and it's very disappointing

because I believed the College to be better than that, to be an

example. And it doesn't matter how many books the school has in its

library, or dining options, or majors offered. It doesn't matter how

smart you are if you have no character. And it makes beg the question,

if nobody was looking, if nobody criticized or screamed out by your

actions, how many other programs would you cut to save money? And if

you let this happen, what real worth do you play as athletic director

of this College, as an advocate for Athletes?

And I don't like to make personal attacks when I really don't know

the whole situation, but cutting a varsity program seems like a pretty

explicit topic. And I can't stand around and act like nothing's

happening, act like this is not my problem so not get involved, and

it's quite possible that I would never be held accountable for whether

or not I spoke up when this happened. But I will know, and I hold

myself far more accountable for my actions than anyone else because I

have to live with myself. Because someday, God willing, I will

hopefully have the opportunity to set an example for my children, and

when I speak to them about character, I want it to mean something, I

want my actions to define my character, and I hope my actions will have

an impact on people because of that character. So wish you luck with

the following days as people express their reactions, and I hope you

take a sincere look at the character of the college what it means to

you and what it means to everybody else, and really decide whether

saving a little or a lot of money is really worth it. If the character

of the college has price tag. I sincerely hope not. Thank you for

your time.

 

Best of luck,

 

John Turner