All He Ever Wanted by Anita Shreve

limbs, slumped posture, pale visages, and difficulties with breathing brought
     on by indifference to matters of the body. He called attention to cases of disease and feebleness and, in some instances,
     premature death among the students. (I thought this was going a bit too far.) If every student were required to participate
     in physical exercise daily, he insisted, the general health of the student population would improve. Worse, he had the audacity
     to suggest that faculty ought to be required to exercise regularly on the theory that their teaching and their relationships
     with the students would improve as well. To house such activity, Hallock proposed, the college should erect a gymnasium.
    I was on my feet at once, though it was some moments before I could speak over the cheers from the gallery. The proposed site
     of this “gymnasium,” I informed my audience, was none other than the college’s beloved Strout Park, a particularly serene
     bit of landscape nestled among the severe granite hills. Was such a precious natural resource to be squandered in the pursuit
     of an enterprise that ought best to be performed in private and certainly not under the auspices of the college? To then endow,
     I asserted, this endeavor with all the hallowed privileges of, say, the faculty of Literature and Rhetoric was obscene. There
     was a faint titter of laughter, which I tried to ignore, despite the fact that I feared that my cause was lost (the simple
     geometry of the audience could tell me that).
    Nevertheless, I persevered. Was it truly the charge of the college, I asked, to take over the physical education of a man?
     Was this not more properly a task suited to the military, which depended on a man’s fitness, or to the physician, whose job
     it was to preserve the health of any individual? Did the college really think it could dictate health and then, piling absurdity
     upon absurdity, grant a degree for it? Were the precious financial resources of the college to be spent on a facility in which
     young men might run around with balls, or were they not better apportioned to the improvement of the library, which sorely
     needed more books, or to the erection of an observatory, so that our understanding of the heavens might increase?
    “Surely men are entitled to the pursuit of physical health,” I argued, softening my tone a bit, as is necessary in any rhetorical
     argument. “Surely anyone who actually
enjoys
throwing a ball around a field can find like-minded fellows with whom to do this in his spare time. This is the essence of
recreation,
by definition an adjunct to education, not its point.”
    “Hear, hear,” someone from my side called out.
    “Nonsense,” shouted someone from the other side.
    President Phillips had to ask for order. William Bliss was seated to my right (in the pro-gymnasium two-thirds), and I dared
     not look at him lest I be derailed completely.
    “But to make such an activity
compulsory,
” I said, “is beyond reason. One cannot dictate physical health any more than one can dictate good teeth or good breeding.
     The college is in danger of straying into an arena in which it has no place and, further, of risking becoming a laughingstock.
     Do we really imagine that sober parents will send us their children? Will they not want more for their one hundred and fifty-five
     dollars a year than this misplaced commitment to harden their sons’ bodies?”
    The shouts and calls had reached a level uncomfortable enough that I was forced to raise my voice above the fray.
    “Of what possible use will a degree in physical culture be?” I asked, nearly shouting now. “Are we not in danger of releasing
     into the world students with no skills beyond what might be useful in the military? The business of a university …” I said,
     and then stopped.
    “The business of a university …” I tried.
    I could not finish my sentence. An odd and unpleasant sensation had taken hold of my eyes so that the