By Anne Baker

Student Government Association (SGA) presidential candidates Rob Ranley and Marines Piney were censured by the SGA rules committee late Thursday for failing to meet deadlines, according to e-mails obtained by The News that were sent to both candidates.

The rules committee, the SGA body in charge of the presidential election, sent out an e-mail notifying the candidates of the censure because neither candidate had turned in a biography or the first-week financial report by their deadlines, according to the e-mail.

Grant Oberg, chair of the rules committee, said he sent out an e-mail notifying the candidates on March 16 that their biographies would be due March 20 by 6 p.m., giving them four days, he said.

Oberg said he was primarily concerned with the biographies over the financial reports because Information Services (IS) needs them to set up the website for students to vote. Without them, he said, IS could not program the website and voting would be delayed.

Though both candidates did submit their biographies later Thursday night and did not upset the election process, it was still past deadline, Oberg said.

“The only reason the committee did decide to issue the censure was because we really were in a risk of throwing off the entire voting process,” he said. “The censure was more of a reminder that we do have these deadlines and it is important to follow them”

Ranley missed the deadline because he was in Spain, he said in an e-mail.

“We had changed hotels while moving from Torremolinos to Granada to Sevilla, and my Internet access in each city was unreliable,” Ranley said. “I had about 48 hours where I had no Internet access, which happened to be when the biography was due, so I was not able to submit what I had prepared until after the deadline.”

Ranley did not think the censure was unreasonable, he said.

“Since this was an unintentional and honest mistake, the action taken by the Rules Committee seemed fair,” he said.

Piney didn’t return requests for comment.

Although Oberg said the censure was “not even a slap on the wrist,” if the candidates continue to miss deadlines, more serious action will be taken by the rules committee.

In the e-mails notifying the candidates of their censure, the candidates were also warned that the rules committee would reconvene if the candidates missed further deadlines, and would then decide what action to take.

Oberg said he did not expect the candidates to miss other deadlines and said he wished to see more involvement from the student body

“I think this was a one-time occurrence caused by the fact that we’re still in the first week of the election,” he said. “But I would definitely like the student body to be a little bit more vocal about what they want from their candidates.”

Ranley’s decision to go abroad during the first week of campaigning could be a contributing factor to his missing the deadline, Oberg said.

“I think part of it is that Rob did choose to go out of the country during the election period,” he said. “I would hope that now that he’s back that things will definitely step up.”

Oberg hopes students do not choose their candidate based on the censure, he said.

“I don’t think personally that it should impact the way students view the candidates,” he said. “They inconvenienced the committee a little bit, but no real harm is done.”