Editor’s Note: This is the third in a four-part series profiling the Student Government candidates. The articles will be printed in order according to presidential candidate’s last name.
Landon Hester and Kristina Lagasse hope to be elected Student Government president and vice president of “Your LSU.”
Hester has served on the SG Senate, representing the University Center for Advising and Counseling and is currently the executive deputy chief of staff. Lagasse is the vice president of the Manship School of Mass Communication College Council. Both are public relations juniors.
Hester said he chose Lagasse as a running mate because she is “strong” enough to run SG while he plans to be away fighting budget cuts at the state Capitol.
“We’re going to need a strong vice president candidate when I’m not here,” he said. “Kristina is a strong, humble servant.”
Both candidates are also Greek.
“[Greek Life] has been an influence on my life … but that’s not the only thing that comprises who we are as people,” Lagasse said. “LSU is so much more than that. … We can’t just focus on one organization.”
Hester said he wants students to know what SG is doing at all times, and he hopes his and Lagasse’s backgrounds as public relations majors will help to spread their message.
“We have focused on making SG transparent … so the students know what is going on,” he said. “No one really knows what we do.”
Hester said he won’t echo the chancellor’s, provost’s or Faculty Senate’s stances on the budget crisis.
“We will definitely propose new ideas,” he said, though he did not specify those ideas. “I know the crisis we’re in.”
Lagasse said budget cuts have also dampened students’ morale, and she hopes to remedy that.
“We want to give LSU a facelift. Our morale is down,” she said. “It needs to feel 100 percent and have that extra excitement about it.”
The Your LSU candidates said they will raise morale by implementing athletic pep rallies in the spring and fall semesters, reworking the priority point system and instituting fourth-quarter giveaways.
Hester added he would like to expand on the Quarters 4 Change pink breast cancer awareness football game.
“It got the students involved and made a difference not just to the University … but to outside organizations,” he said.
Hester said he plans to continue current SG President Cody Wells’ Budget Crisis Taskforce. He praised the Together LSU ticket’s battle against budget cuts.
“Cody and Kathleen have done a phenomenal job [with budget cuts],” Hester said.
Hester also said he plans to speak with students more than Wells has.
“We really want to get out there and engage in the student body … kind of become one with them,” he said. “[We want to] make SG more personable and relatable to students.”
The two have been a part of student government-related activities since high school, when they met at the Louisiana Association of Student Councils convention during their junior year.
At that convention, former University SG president Stuart Watkins and vice president Martina Scheuermann spoke to the students.
“That’s gonna be you and me,” the teenaged Hester told Lagasse at the time.
 
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Contact Danielle Kelley at [email protected]