During the past week, the campaigns leading up to the direct election of the Student Government Association (SGA) president have taken some unusual, unexpected and unprecedented turns. A series of events has cast disturbing light on the SGA elections, starting with Marines Piney dropping out of the race and ending with tonight’s vote to decide whether new candidate Dan Kamyck will appear on the ballot.
Last Monday, Piney dropped out. She told the Senate at that week’s meeting that day, and announced her decision to the student body later that evening at the start of what was intended to be a debate between two candidates.
That night, the SGA Rules Committee voted to reopen nominations, and by Tuesday Dan Kamyck, a junior marketing major, had entered the race. Senators had a day to place a block on Kamyck’s candidacy, and at 8:26 p.m. Tuesday, senator Lucas Rose, a sophomore business major, e-mailed a block just before the 9 p.m. deadline. Rose has not yet publicly explained the reason he moved to block Kamyck’s candidacy.
That was where the breakneck pace of unfolding events suddenly stopped, as the Senate would not vote on Rose’s block until their next weekly meeting, which will take place tonight at 7:30 p.m.
This timing issue is inappropriate and exceedingly unfair to both the student body and Kamyck. The Senate should have convened a special session; waiting five days to weigh the block has hurt the integrity of the direct election process.
Moreover, the SGA will not make its decision until after a debate between Kamyck and Rob Ranley, the other candidate in the election, which is being hosted by the Resident Student Association (RSA) tonight at 6 p.m. Plus, voting starts tomorrow morning, so this all will be decided the night before elections begin. Rose’s block has hung over Kamyck’s head for nearly a week. Up to this point, the day before voting commences, no one knows why it was even filed.
Tonight, the SGA will finally hear Rose’s reasons for moving to block Kamyck’s candidacy. The timing of the vote is absurd: The SGA will decide if Kamyck will be allowed to be a candidate after the RSA debate. In many ways, the two-thirds of senators needed to support Rose’s block could instead be voting on whether or not they want Kamyck to run.
If that proves to be the case, then the choice is arbitrary: The SGA will effectively be voting whether or not to coronate Ranley.
“Senators who want to make this an uncontested race are taking a hatchet to that process,” wrote former senators Bill Durkin, Adriana Campos and Michael DeRamo, all of whom have served on the SGA’s executive board, in a letter they will present to the SGA tomorrow. “They want to relapse to the old, paternal Senate, the supposedly infallible body that thinks it knows what’s best for students. They are wrong.”
We are in jeopardy of losing our right to choose a candidate in the SGA direct elections, the sole reason to vote. We need to take the elections back from the SGA: The student body has the power and the responsibility to ensure the legitimacy of elections. The winning candidate needs 20 percent of Northeastern students to vote for him. That is where we have the power to reclaim the elections.
If Kamyck is not on the ballot Tuesday morning, do not cast a vote.
Refuse to vote not because you have no confidence in Ranley, but because you have no confidence in a system that is clearly dysfunctional. If 20 percent of the student body does not vote, the election will not count.
Do not vote “No Confidence” either – your vote will still count towards the 20 percent the SGA needs to make the election legitimate.
We must preserve the integrity of direct elections. If the SGA wants to have direct elections, we must be able to directly elect a candidate. Meddling by the Senate has taken our influence out of the process.
We want it back.
