In the Editor’s Mail Box (Vol. 2, Issue 7)

To the Editor of the Commentator:

Dear Sir: with all due respect to Mr. Werfel’s name-calling ability and literary capacity, which in last week’s letter to the Editor were identical, it must be pointed out that his power of definition lacks sense of proportion and setting.

“Presidential prerogative is governed entirely by personal desires and the whys and wherefores are private matters,” while possibly applicable in the case of Yeldorado of yore, is entirely foreign to Yeshiva of 1936, especially the student administration. The danger of such presidential powers is obvious even in the execution of delegated constitutional powers, how much more so in the assumption by the executive of unconstitutional powers. That such is now the case can be seen from the appointment of Mr. Henkin, the editor of the literary supplement, to the editorship of the Masmid, the vacancy having resulted from the ‘resignation’ of Mr. Gordon. For the president had absolutely no right to make this appointment.

The constitution provides for the outgoing boar of the Masmid to elect the new editor. Last year’s board elected Mr. Gordon as editor of the Masmid, and Mr. Henkin as editor of the literary supplement. In the event that the supplement should not appear, they provided for Mr. Henkin to become co-editor of the Masmid with Mr. Gordon. The board, however, showed no intention of having Mr. Henkin as editor of the Masmid in the event of the appearance of the literary supplement.

From where then did the president derive this power to appoint an editor, especially he, whom the rightful electors, the outgoing board, did not see fit to designate? Is it, possibly, “his services” to last year’s Masmid, the devotion of one evening to the reading of proofs? Or is this too “governed by personal desires” of which “the whys and wherefores are private matters?” Then again, is it a mere coincidence that the person for whom the president went to illegal means to appoint as editor is the same person seated by “presidential prerogative: in the students Council though a seat was denied to the then editor of the Masmid, Mr. Gordon?

Of the Hoi Polloi