SLOPPY FINANCE

Motions passed by the Student Council in its first session of the current academic year indicate a decided laxity on the part of past Councils in the handling of financial matters. Debts exceeding $1,500 on the publication of the University Register alone have been handed down unpaid to the present Council. What other debts may still be outstanding from former years was not reported.

Such negligence in the discharge of financial obligations is directly contrary to the first principle of sound government, whatever may be its magnitude. The fault has undoubtedly lain in divided responsibility and accumulating confusion of records rather than in any individual delinquency. Responsibility is bound to float rather uncertainly from one to another of an elective body of student officials; the custom of changing all class and college officers annually but widens, of course, the breach for error. But the mere fact that blame lies in the system rather than on specific heads does not mitigate the ill-effects of the resulting inefficiency.

The present Student Council is to be strongly commended for facing squarely the problem of paying off debts incurred through none of its own doing. At the same time, however, that past Student Council deficits are being wiped out it might not be amiss to investigate the whole tangle of official undergraduate finance. Centralized and responsible control of all class and general undergraduate funds offers the most logical solution of future difficulties.