SECRETARIES AND SUCH

The suggestions just offered by Mr. Mead. Comptroller of the University, and secretary of the class of 1887, for the election of future class secretaries and class committees are interesting and worthy of more than passing consideration.

If it is true, as is implied in various comments, that class secretaries are elected as a general rule on a basis of all round conviviality during their college course rather than of competence, there is much force in the several arguments for a change of methods; but the accuracy of this generality can hardly be established by the facts. A majority of the secretaries have been men trained by their collegiate activities for executive and managerial positions, and are consequently well fitted for their posts. It would be a grave mistake to dismiss these men at the end of a few years of service and chance the possibility of obtaining others less suited to the work, for the sole purpose of keeping alive that almost mythical, most intangible thing known as class spirit; which after all, is merely a relatively superficial expression of a more deeply rooted feeling of attachment to the University as a whole.

As is remarked by other experienced observers, the task of breaking in a new man, when a longer and longer interval separates the class from its graduation day, would be one of monumental difficulty. Also, the necessity of having permanent officers, familiar with the course of class and college events, to start things off at reunions and banquets in apparent to anyone who has even attended such a ceremony.

If subsequent classes, however, decide that experimental changes would be beneficial, the suggestion of making the first election temporary for five years after graduation, and then electing, or as the case may be, re-electing a permanent secretary, seems the most logical. For classes already graduated, modifications of the present system hardly seem either desirable or practicable.