In 1924, the Student Government Association (SGA) was founded to serve as the united voice of the undergraduate student body at Northeastern. SGA, on its very own website, claims that “every undergraduate student is considered a part of SGA,” and students are encouraged to participate and let their voices be heard. The direct election of the SGA president was designed and implemented last year to give the student body a voice and the power to elect their leadership.
The majority of the senators in SGA agree and work toward that mission. They care about the student body and listen for the opinions of the students. They are in SGA for the right reasons, and are great student leaders who I am proud and honored to have worked alongside.
Unfortunately, there are senators in SGA who want to take the choice away from the student body. These senators are the ones who hope that the direct elections process will fail and that SGA will not achieve the 20 percent vote required for a valid election, sending the decision back to the Joint Senate and disenfranchising the more than 2,100 students who already have cast their votes. In an effort to avoid such a situation, I have suggested and will make a motion at the Joint Senate to override the Direct Elections Manual and allow the student body’s vote to count regardless of the 20 percent threshold.
I have been told by fellow Senators that they intend to object to the motion. Rather than allow 3,000 votes to decide the election – or even 2,000 – these Senators want 50 votes to be the deciding factor. Could it be that these Senators want this because they feel more powerful being 1 of 50 than being 1 of 3,000?
Should the direct election be derailed or fail this year, it will likely mark the end of direct elections for a long time. If students end up seeing that the students’ votes didn’t matter this year, what incentive will they have to vote next year?
And how can SGA call itself an advocate of the student body and encourage participation when it hides — or attempts to hide – matters, where no student privacy concerns exist, behind the veil of an executive session? By doing this, no students-at-large can give their input on these matters, nor are they even able to properly hear about the proceedings? In the past week SGA held almost an entire Rules Committee meeting in executive session and there was an attempt, which luckily failed, to hold the motion to block Senator Dan Kamyck’s nomination in an executive session.
As someone who has served in the SGA for the greater part of my time here at Northeastern, it frustrates me to see this happening. It frustrates me that some in the SGA ignore calls for transparency, like an August 2006 editorial in The News calling for the SGA to “let the light of public scrutiny shine.”
The solution to this problem is not found within the SGA. As I and other Senators have found, changing the mentality of some in the SGA is not always easily done from the inside. The solution lies on the outside – with the student body SGA represents.
Only by students calling upon SGA to hold itself open and accountable will SGA be forced to keep a higher standard of openness. When SGA hides votes behind the veil of executive session, it is impossible for students to hold their representatives accountable because no record is kept or made available of which way a given senator voted. Some senators like their votes not being public – they like denying their constituents the opportunity to hold them accountable. I don’t. Talk to any of my constituents, and they will tell you that I have never been afraid to have any vote made public, and that if asked, I can give a detailed explanation as to why I voted in one direction or another and that the explanation almost always includes voting based on how my constituency felt, not how I personally felt.
I ask the student body to call upon SGA and to call upon the individual Senators who represent them to push for a greater level of transparency and openness in the Association. Tell your Senators not to hold proceedings in executive session, and tell them you want your voice and your votes to decide who will be the next student body president, and not the voice and vote of a 50-person Joint Senate.
– Matt Soleyn is a middler marketing and information science major and an SGA senator.
