Tradition is a guide, not a jailer,” English playwright and novelist W. Somerset Maugham is famously quoted as saying. A.S. President Harry Khanna would be wise to listen to him.

Under Khanna’s proposed executive budget, tradition would loack away approximately $72,000 for so-called “tradition events,” like the annual college festivals. Apart from the obvious problem — that no Sixth College event would be eligible for the money, because the college hasn’t been around long enough — the idea raises another fundamental question: Should history dictate funding decisions?

As defined in the proposal, tradition events are those that have existed for at least 10 years, and have consistently attracted at least 300 people each year. Thurgood Marshall College’s Cultural Celebration would qualify — even though most of the attendees are new admits and their parents, not the students footing the bill. Rock ‘N’ Roosevelt, a popular concert hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt College, on the other hand, would not, because it began only a few years ago.

In effect, a tradition event’s budget line item simply codifies the status quo, allowing decisions made a decade ago to constrain today’s choices.

While using an event’s past turnout as one factor in funding decisions is legitimate, this board firmly opposes carving out protected funds for tradition’s sake; requiring a rigorous annual review and forcing old events to compete against new ones assures that student money is spent on the best of the best.

When he ran for president, Khanna promised to revamp the arduous funding-request process for all student organizations. Instead of doing that, his current proposal simply attempts to exempt a category of events from the headaches, leaving the underlying problems unaddressed.