To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In reply to the suggestion, recently made in this column, that the Student Council President be chosen by a college-wide election, I should like to offer the following points:

1) The present system of allowing the Council to select its own President lends itself least to the evils of electioneering and demagoguery. The Council has an opportunity to scrutinise the records and qualifications of the candidates in an exhaustive (judging, at least, from this year's) session that leaves little unsaid. Before a small body deception or politicking work to a candidate's inevitable disadvantage. Finally, many members of the Council usually are personally acquainted with the candidates abilities and limitations by having worked with those candidates on Council business.

2) The mechanisms of a college-wide election would be difficult to construct and more difficult to manage.

3) I dispute the assertion that universal suffrage would heighten interest in Council--assuming the candidates would not be the beneficiaries of free local T.V. time. It is the members of the Council who would bear the bulk of its work and accomplish the task of rendering it a more useful body. Interest expended on a college-wide popularity contest could better be channeled into the members' elections conducted in the Houses and freshman class.

4) At present, the Presidency amounts to an administrative position assumed in addition to the quasi-legislative functions of every member. There is no observable impetus toward factionalism in the Council since the President is not the embodiment of a popular mandate. He is answerable to the Council and this puts restraints upon his office which work to good ends.

I would argue the Parliamentary system deserves perpetuation, in the Student Council's case, despite the taint of anglophilla. Roger M. Leed '61