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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE developed, the faculty had followed its customary practice of turning over the management of such activity to the students, though not without limiting their freedom of action by many rules and regulations. Thus, during most of the 1890s it was the Athletic Association, clearly a student organization, which directed intercollegiate athletics. One of the key tasks of the association was to select coaches for the various teams. Always short of funds, unable to offer anyone a secure College position, the students watched as men they engaged came and went with great regularity, some of them departing even before the season was completed. By the end of the decade both faculty and trustees had decided that intercollegiate sports had progressed to a point at which a more-encompassing organization was needed to administer them. In 1899 the trustees created the Athletic Council, consisting of twelve persons (three faculty, three alumni, and six students) and authorized it to operate the sports program in cooperation with the Athletic Association.339 By the fall of 1904 the faculty had accepted the fact that intercollegiate athletics at Gettysburg had come to stay, at least for a very long time. With little or no prospect of placing them in charge of a College staff person who would do their bidding, the professors had no intention of bringing these sports under their immediate, direct control. However, they could not abdicate their responsibility for maintaining the quality of the academic program, and consequently they continued to insist upon obedience to certain rules which they believed it their duty to impose and enforce, as best they could. For example, they had granted musical organizations and athletic teams fifteen absences each year for off-campus ventures and believed that exceptions to this rule should be few and only for good cause. Further, they held that only those persons demonstrably necessary for playing away games should leave the campus. Also, they believed that only regularly enrolled students taking a normal course load should be allowed to play in intercollegiate teams. Finally, they reserved the right to review and alter schedules whenever they saw fit to do so. Even by 1904 the faculty was making exceptions to these rules and one could ask how long some of them were going to remain on the books. Judging from the prominence given to intercollegiate athletics in the Gettysburgian and Spectrum, it would appear that many, if not most, students were its strong supporters. They had composed yells, written songs and adopted colors primarily, though not exclusively, 339Many other colleges created similar organizations about this time, with representatives from trustees, faculty, students, and alumni. 65