This spring Dartmouth College will graduate a class fluent in literature, science, writing and foreign languages—but, for the first time in more than a century, not necessarily able to swim. Since the early 1900s the Ivy League university has required undergraduates to swim 50 yards, equivalent to a lap, before receiving a diploma. But in 2022 the faculty voted to scrap the test, beginning with this year's seniors. Dartmouth joins a handful of other elite institutions that have abandoned their swim requirements in recent years, including Williams (2022), Hamilton (2023) and Washington and Lee (2024). The shift says less about the merits of staying afloat than about universities' preoccupation with racial equity.

今年春天，达特茅斯学院将送走一批精通文学、科学、写作和外语的毕业生—— 但一个多世纪以来，他们首次不一定都会游泳。 自20世纪初以来，这所常春藤盟校一直要求本科生在获得文凭前游完50码（相当于一个来回）。 但在2022年，该校教职员工投票决定取消这项测试，从今年的大四学生开始实施。 达特茅斯学院加入了近年来放弃游泳要求的少数几所精英学府之列，包括威廉姆斯学院（2022年）、 汉密尔顿学院（2023年）以及华盛顿与李大学（2024年）。 这一转变与其说是反映了保持漂浮能力的价值，不如说是体现了大学对种族平等的执着追求。

Swim tests were once commonplace on American campuses. Cornell University introduced the requirement in 1905 at the urging of Frank Barton, an army officer and professor who argued that a soldier who could not swim was dead weight to his unit. Princeton University, which added its swim requirement in 1911, prided itself on having one of the most demanding tests, requiring students to swim a full 220 yards. By 1913 the New York Times observed that "there is scarcely a college which does not prescribe a course in physical education and make swimming an essential part of the course".

游泳测试曾在美国校园中十分普遍。 康奈尔大学于1905年在陆军军官兼教授弗兰克·巴顿的敦促下引入了这项要求。 巴顿认为，不会游泳的士兵对部队来说是累赘。 普林斯顿大学于1911年增加了游泳要求，并以其要求最为严苛而自豪， 要求学生游满220码。 到1913年，《纽约时报》观察到，“几乎所有大学都开设了体育课程，并将游泳作为课程的重要组成部分”。

Like many campus traditions, swim tests accumulated their share of folklore over the years. At Harvard it is often claimed that Eleanor Elkins Widener, an heiress who donated $2m to build the university's flagship library, demanded the school adopt a swimming requirement in memory of her son Harry, a 1907 graduate who died on the Titanic. That is almost certainly untrue. But reports of students taking the tests naked are well documented.

和许多校园传统一样，游泳测试多年来也积累了不少传说。 在哈佛大学，人们常说，捐赠200万美元建造该校标志性图书馆的女继承人埃莉诺·埃尔金斯·怀德纳， 要求学校将游泳作为必修课，以纪念她1907年毕业、在泰坦尼克号上遇难的儿子哈利。 这几乎肯定不是真的。 但学生裸体参加测试的报道却有据可查。

Over the years budget pressures and waning administrative enthusiasm led many schools to abandon their swim requirements. A survey conducted in 1977 by researchers at Temple University found that 42% of four-year universities still mandated a swim test for graduation. In 1997 researchers at North Carolina State University estimated that just 5% of four-year universities had such requirements. By the 2010s most colleges had dispensed with the tests, deeming them anachronistic, cumbersome to administer and difficult to enforce. Among the last remaining holdouts (apart from the service academies) are Berea, Bryn Mawr, Columbia, Cornell, MIT and Swarthmore.

多年来，预算压力和管理层热情的消退导致许多学校放弃了游泳要求。 天普大学研究人员1977年进行的一项调查发现，仍有42%的四年制大学强制要求毕业前通过游泳测试。 1997年，北卡罗来纳州立大学的研究人员估计，只有5%的四年制大学有此类要求。 到2010年代，大多数大学都取消了测试，认为它们不合时宜、管理繁琐且难以执行。 除了军事院校外，最后仍坚持这项要求的学校包括贝利亚学院、布林莫尔学院、哥伦比亚大学、康奈尔大学、麻省理工学院和斯沃斯莫尔学院。

In recent years the focus has shifted from the cost and inconvenience of swim tests to the uncomfortable racial disparities they reveal. Swimming ability in America remains sharply divided along racial lines. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, black children aged five to 14 are more than five times as likely to drown in a swimming pool as their white counterparts. Black adults are more than five times as likely as whites to report that they do not know how to swim. The gap cannot be explained by differences in income alone. Even the most well-off black adults are less proficient in the pool than the poorest whites.

近年来，焦点已从游泳测试的成本和不便转移到其所揭示的不舒服的种族差异上。 在美国，游泳能力仍存在明显的种族差异。 据美国疾病控制与预防中心称， 5至14岁的黑人儿童在游泳池中溺水的可能性是同龄白人儿童的五倍多。 黑人成年人报告不会游泳的可能性是白人的五倍多。 这种差距不能仅用收入差异来解释。 即使是最富有的黑人成年人在泳池中的熟练程度也不如最贫穷的白人。

These days such disparities make universities uneasy. Williams College found that between 2013 and 2019, 81% of students who failed its 50-yard swim test were students of colour. After a university committee deemed this "problematic" in 2022 the faculty voted to scrap the requirement, citing its "disparate impact" on minority students. "You're reinforcing systemic oppression in some ways," the school's athletic director told the Chronicle of Higher Education. When Dartmouth eliminated its own swim test later that year, school administrators offered a similar explanation, noting that those who failed were "overwhelmingly students of colour".

如今，这种差异让大学感到不安。 威廉姆斯学院发现，2013年至2019年间，在其50码游泳测试中失败的学生中有81%是有色人种学生。 2022年，一个大学委员会认为这“有问题”，随后教职员工投票决定取消这项要求， 理由是它对少数族裔学生有“不同影响”。 “你在某种程度上强化了系统性压迫，”该校体育主任告诉《高等教育纪事报》。 同年晚些时候，达特茅斯学院取消了自己的游泳测试，学校管理人员给出了类似的解释， 指出未通过测试的学生“绝大多数是有色人种学生”。

Against the current

逆流而上

Not all universities are shying away from the controversy. In 2024 a Cornell faculty committee voted to retain the university's swim requirement. In its resolution the committee acknowledged racial disparities in swimming ability but argued that the test should remain precisely in order to help narrow them. "By providing formal swimming instruction," the committee concluded, "Cornell is doing its small part to help right the wrongs of US history and close the racial gap in accidental drowning in this country."

并非所有大学都回避这一争议。 2024年，康奈尔大学的一个教职委员会投票决定保留该校的游泳要求。 该委员会在决议中承认游泳能力存在种族差异，但认为正是为了帮助缩小这种差异，才应该保留这项测试。 “通过提供正式的游泳教学，”委员会总结道， “康奈尔大学正在尽自己的一份微薄之力，帮助纠正美国历史上的错误，并缩小这个国家意外溺水的种族差距。”