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A GREATER WORK promptly joined the association, which tried heroically to operate the facility. It proved to be an overwhelming task. Citing "want of interest" and the refusal of the students to pay the charge of twenty- five cents per term which it tried to levy upon them, the association voted in June 1875 to turn the gymnasium back to the faculty.194 The professors were able to add, first seventy-five cents and then one dollar per year, to the cost of attending College, and to use the proceeds from this charge to maintain the facility. At times many students took advantage of the opportunities which it afforded. "The gymnasium is being used almost constantly," reported the College Monthly in April 1882, "and the few moments spent there bring an ample reward." There was considerable vandalism and eventually the faculty placed wire screens over the windows to make it more difficult for town and campus boys to break them. The construction and early use ofthe McCreary Gymnasium coincided with the development of intercollegiate athletics in the United States: baseball in 1859, football in 1869, followed by other sports. In September 1869 the Gettysburg students petitioned the faculty for permission to go to Emmitsburg after Saturday morning classes "to play a social game of Base Ball" with Mount St. Mary's students. To make their request more attractive, they asked for a tutor to accompany them. Six years later, the "College 'Base Ball Nine' " asked leave to travel to Hanover to play a game, but not with a College team. In May 1876 fourteen members of the "Penna. College Base Ball Club" sought permission to travel to Chambersburg on one day and return the next, "to play a friendly game of Base Ball with the club of that city," promising that, "if we are favored in this, our humble entreaty, you can rest assured, Gentlemen, that we will rigidly regard all the rules of gentility."195 In October 1879, after a Dickinson College team played on the campus, students asked the faculty to allow their football team to play a return game in Carlisle. These four requests, over a ten-year period, ran counter to the spirit, if not the letter, of the long-established rules and regulations of the College. In the decade between 1869 and 1879, the professors saw no valid reason to regard intercollegiate or out-of-town athletic contests as creating a new situation which justified their changing those rules. Nevertheless, after a short time they proved willing to bend, if only slightly. The 1869 request was denied. The faculty did allow the College Nine to go to Hanover, but its members were required to leave 194The book containing the agreement, the constitution, and the minutes of the association is in the GCA. 195These three student petitions are preserved in the GCA. 34