The role of the Yale College Council’s treasurer can be quite limited. Indeed, there are important and unglamorous responsibilities to balance the organization’s budget and be an advocate for fiscal restraint and responsibility.

In this year’s field, we are confident that both candidates would be good stewards of the council’s limited funds. However, it is Brandon Levin ’13 who shows the vision and determination to do more as treasurer than just sign checks.

Levin is clearly committed to student government at Yale. He is currently the chair of the Freshman Class Council and has shown that he genuinely cares about making improvements to student life. Importantly, he has two very good ideas for improvements the YCC can make next year.

First, Levin wants to make a handbook for leaders of student organizations that would give them more information about requesting funds and using Yale facilities. Second, and more importantly, Levin has one of the best ideas of any candidate for any position in this race: to increase the funding of the YCC’s Student Development Directive, which gave us the DVD collection in Bass Library, to $10,000 from $5,000.

This is a strong response to the fact that there is excess funding in the YCC budget that can be allocated to more important issues and a realization of the fact that programs funded by the YCC are some of its greatest successes. Turning the Fall Show — or, rather, the Winter Show — into a profitable endeavor would allow Levin to work with others on the YCC to spend more money in better ways. This is exactly the kind of leadership a treasurer should offer.

There is no question that Lauren Noble ’11 would be a fine treasurer and we are glad that there is no joke candidate in this year’s race. However, we encourage voters to choose Levin and see if he can do more than just balance the budget. We think he can.