At noon on Wednesday, March 23, we, the Presidents of NU College Democrats, NU College Republicans and the Political Science Student Association & NU Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha Honor Society unanimously withdrew our sponsorship and support of the Student Government Association’s (SGA) debate.

Representatives from our organizations met with representatives of the Elections Committee this past Monday and Tuesday to try to hash out a deal that would work for all of our organizations. Fortunately, we were able to do that. But Tuesday night, SGA President Ryan Fox disregarded the thoroughly thought-out compromise we had agreed to with the Elections Committee. Fox informed us early Wednesday morning that he would be the moderator and refused to allow our non-campaign-affiliated representatives to see SGA’s written questions, even if only shortly before the debate.
In any government, the sitting executive is never the moderator of a debate to replace him. As engaged student organizations, we have a serious problem with this.

We firmly believe that lack of transparency and access to questions, which SGA created prior to the event, is a severe liability to each of the student groups – and as student groups on campus we can no longer support such an event. In addition, we had provided an effective compromise to our issue with who moderates and it was blatantly ignored.

Each of our groups took time out of usual meeting times and schedules to come together for a meeting both Monday and Tuesday nights, and we feel as though we have been played and strung along. We are members of the student body, trying to get actively involved in the elections. We cannot be expected to place our name on an event over which we have absolutely no control. We want to protect the integrity of the election and debate process as much as SGA, but unfortunately, we cannot support being used for our names and our constituencies.

All three of our organizations cherish the right to a free, fair and untainted election process. What has happened to us sets a poor precedent for the future and we can only hope that whoever is elected will work to better engage student groups in this process. Due to the issues we have stated we can no longer support this unfair and unrepresentative debate.

Your voices deserve to be heard and they have fallen upon deaf ears.

–Brittany Tucker is the president of Northeastern University College Democrats;
Camran Rynowecer is the president of Northeastern University College Republicans;
Nicholas Beek is the president of the Political Science Student Association and the Northeastern University Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha Honor Society.