By Anne Baker

Following a contentious election season, the Student Government Association (SGA) voted last week to eliminate its Rules Committee, the body formerly charged with tasks including running elections, legislative oversight and parliamentary procedure, SGA president-elect Rob Ranley said.

SGA voted last Monday to create the Senate Nominations and Elections Committee (SNEC) to head the direct presidential elections process.

In addition to running the direct elections, the Rules Committee was also the “the oversight and advisory body for the legislation, parliamentary procedure, and the history and traditions of the Association,” according to SGA’s constitution. SNEC will focus only on elections, leaving the Rules Committee’s other responsibilities in undetermined hands.

“The idea behind [SNEC’s creation] is really that there needs to be a committee that’s focused on making the elections successful and not have to worry about all the other stuff,” Ranley said.

Grant Oberg, who served as chair of Rules Committee last year, said the initial plan for Rules Committee did not take into account the difficulty that running direct elections would entail.

“The original idea was that with Rules Committee the elections would only be a part of the task and it would have other duties,” Oberg said. “What we didn’t realize is that the elections would take up so much of the committee’s time.”

Adriana Campos, a Northeastern and SGA alumnus who was involved in the creation of Rules Committee two years ago, said the original idea was to create a body to oversee the new direct elections, which are inherently more complicated than the former in-house elections SGA formerly ran.

“There were definitely rules that had to be in place and there definitely needed to be people in place to make sure those were followed,” she said. “I would say the responsibilities that Rules Committee has had for the past two years are in a lot of ways greater than any other committee in the senate and, in some ways, the president.”

Ranley, who proposed the legislation, said the change is a reaction to the spring’s direct elections, which were shaded by “internal conflict.”

“I think people started to lose interest in the candidates and what they were trying to sell and [focused] more on the internal drama,” Ranley said. “It turned people off.”

Ranley’s initial opponent, Marines Piney, dropped out of the race only two weeks after accepting a nomination. A new candidate, Dan Kamyck, initially faced the possibility of being removed from the race after an SGA senator put a block on his nomination. This was later overruled by the senate.

Rules Committee voted twice to extend the voting period, citing a low turnout from students. On the beginning night of the second vote, Oberg resigned from his position.

Ranley eventually won the election, which drew 20.84 percent of the student body, a sharp decrease from the 27 percent voter turnout the year before.

“I think that in all aspects, it went horribly,” said Ryan Fox, SGA vice president for Student Services-elect who served on the Rules Committee this year. “I think there were a lot of facets. It wasn’t just the committee that caused the problems