I don't believe there was a change of administration. I think that Union's
President and Board had no objection to
Division 1 per se; they just did not want to grant athletic scholarships.
This philosophy still exists at Union today.
Harkness, on the other hand, wanted to go to Division 1 and to field a
winning team at the D-1 level. He believed that
couldn't be done without awarding athletic scholarships. When he saw that
the powers that be at Union wouldn't allow that, he left.

It's interesting that Harkness felt he couldn't get a winning team without
the money to hand out having come from Cornell where he had great success
with no scholarship money. Perhaps he had other resources at Cornell that he
did not have access to at Union.

Or perhaps, as has been said, he actually did recruit division 1 caliber
players with no scholarship money available but the Union admissions office
wouldn't accept them. Harkness would feel as if the admissions office was
interfering with his recruiting while the admissions office felt that
Harkness was compromising the school's admission policy. If the Union board
sided with the admissions office, I could see where Harkness would want to
exit the job.




On 11/15/05, Steven Rockey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Ralph Baer says in part:
> >As to leaving Union, basically, the Union administration wanted to keep
> >Union hockey as a D-III program and also didn't like the caliber of
> student
> >that Harkness was recruiting.
>
> I think this correct. According to Harkness in a newspaper story of the
> time, he left because Union admissions did not accept some players he had
> recruited who were accepted at Dartmouth and perhaps other schools with
> good academics. I do recall Dartmouth but other schools he may have
> mentioned in the article are lost in the fog of time. It struck me at the
> time that if what Harkenss said was true that Union really did not want
> recruited athletes or to go Div.1. He was a passionate and persuasive
> (stronger words could also apply) man used to getting people to see thinks
> his way -- maybe he just failed to charm the admissions people at Union. I
> was amazed a few years later when Union did go Div. 1. Perhaps there was a
> change of administration in the intervening period. I recall thinking that
> if they wanted to go Div. 1 they should have done it with Harkness.
>
> --Steve
> Cornell ''70
>