The Overseer Election

The alumni will select new overseers in an election this month, but many of the graduates who are most familiar with the college's problems will not be eligible to vote. According to a rule passed in 1865, alumni may not cast a ballot until five years after they graduate. Apparently the five years following graduation are more valuable to a man bent on acquiring sagacity and maturity than the four years he spends getting his degree.

The only rationale for this archaic rule is that new alumni do not know the members of earlier classes who appear on the ballots. But then it is hardly likely that the younger alumni will get to know their elders any better in the five years after commencement than they did before--that a member of the Class of '66 will know the Class of '40 any better any better in 1971 than now. The passage of time will only dim his memory, cloud his recollection of passing acquaintances and faces, so that the name of his classmate down the hall in his House, appearing on the ballot, will elicit an apologetic: "Oh yes, don't remember exactly who he is but guess he was a good man..."

In fact the present rule deprives those who are closest to the problems of students--in age and experience--of the opportunity to influence the choice of powerful overseers; it virtually precludes representation of younger, more concerned men on the Board; and it encourages voting along class lines. The five years out of college will not provide any kind of wisdom indispensible to the solemn task of choosing overseers. This rule, an apparent holdover from Reconstruction days, should be abolished.