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To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In this morning's CRIMSON President Derby of the Senior class summons the Freshmen to assemble next Monday evening for their first class election. The custom at Harvard in recent years has been for the men chosen at the first election to serve through their entire College course. This custom gives very uneven results. Most of the officers will be fairly well fitted for their positions, and satisfactory to everybody, but the class may find some of the men chosen in the Freshman year neither creditable nor satisfactory.

It would be a delicate matter, indeed, to define precisely the qualities necessary for a good class officer. A president, clearly enough, should be able not only to preside acceptably at class meetings, but to represent the class at public meetings, and to do effectively such work on committees and semi-official boards as his office will inevitably bring him. The other offices call likewise for competent men, men who have power of initiative and business capacity. Sometimes such men are chosen in the first place, but there is no way of being at all sure about it.

Men who dissent from my view will say that the preparatory school and the first half of the Freshman year bring the worthy men to the top. To a considerable extent this is true, but the preparatory school leader it not always the man who stands highest in our esteem after three years in college.

The unworthy popularity of some such man may give a class an unsatisfactory officer; or what is worse, a piece of scheming school politics may foist on the class a man whom they are afterwards sorry to see in office.

My criticism is not that we are suffering from generally incompetent officers. We get surprisingly good men, as Dean Briggs has said, but we leave the chance open for incompetents, and sometimes we get them. Our system offers great rewards for one bold political "hold-up" in the Freshman year, and usually it is tried and sometimes it succeeds. Worst of all, if the class has a well-grounded dissatisfaction over any class officer, opposition to his re-election cannot be organized without dragging into the discussion personalities which must be distasteful to everybody. It is largely because of this that the custom is so fixed of continuing men in office when once they are elected in the Freshman year.

Another objection to the present system is that after the first election there is no interest in class meetings. Such meetings well conducted might provide a training in the business of a deliberative assembly which is sadly needed. A presiding officer who knows how business ought to be done, and tries to do it properly, meets anything but encouragement from the unparliamentary fashion in which business is presented. This tendency to let things slide--to rest content with results, and sometimes with no results--has its influence on a great number of our college enterprises. We collect our athletic subscriptions and sell our tickets in a slip-shod fashion. When the grievance becomes intolerable somebody remonstrates and we experience a reform. Naturally other enterprises take notice and adopt parts of the new system. But altogether we are slow to change, and we suffer long. One of the reasons for this is, I believe, that we do not accustom ourselves to using the machinery which would make reforms easily attainable.

We ought to find some way to improve a system which is subject to two such serious objections. The Freshman class ought to consider the matter very carefully. Why would it not be a great change for the better if the class of 1906 should adopt a constitution previous to their class election which should provide that no man elected to office before the third annual meeting of the class should be eligible for re-election at the expiration of his term. This would bring the class to its Senior election with a variety of candidates more or less trained for their work. It would put a premium on good work of the kind required from class officers: and Harvard interests would be better served, not only in class affairs, but wherever there was an opportunity for good management and executive ability to make itself felt. There would be more interest in class meetings if ability to manage class meetings had a chance for reward, and our presiding officers would feel a stimulus that is entirely absent now. The greatest advantage, however, is that the class would have the benefit of a three years sifting process in finding out who among its members are most capable for service or worthy of honor, and could have these men in office the last and most important year.

Among those who read this article there will be many, no doubt, who can offer suggestions or modifications for this plan. Would it not be a real kindness to 1906 and all subsequent classes to have a discussion of this reform, and if it seems desirable, to urge its adoption. President Derby tells me that the Princeton system is very much like the one proposed here, and it seems a great improvement over the rigid system we follow at Harvard. C. H. SCOVELL