CLASS TREASURERS.

The recent vote of the Student Council that each class be assessed ten dollars a year to pay the expenses of the Council, brings to our attention that mysterious person, the Class Treasurer, and his functions. Mysterious, we say, because curiously enough and quite contrary to the usual state of affairs in corporate bodies, the treasurers of undergraduate classes in Harvard do not make public the condition of class finances. Assessments are laid on members of a class, money is received and spent for dinners, smokers, and other purposes, treasurers hand over their accounts and funds to their successors as each annual election comes along; but the body of the class is never admitted to the secrets of the exchequer. This is not as it should be. Secrecy is not desirable, whether it cover up conditions of health or sickness, of affluence or bankruptcy. It savors of antiquated, autocratic methods, and is by no means calculated to foster class spirit or general interest in class affairs.

Remedies may take one of several forms. Either treasurers should be called on to make periodical reports to the Student Council of their receipts and expenditures and to publish their accounts in the CRIMSON, or each treasurer should, at the close of his term of office, send to all members of his class who have paid aught into the treasury a statement of income and outgo. Whether this be justifiable on one ground or another is quite immaterial; the fact that such loose methods, such secrecy, as now prevail, exist and continue merely by the acquiescence of the classes in "things as they are," is reason for a new system which shall be at once more sound and more democratic.