Student Government President Cody Wells and Vice President Kathleen Bordelon will pass the torch to President-elect Taylor Cox and Vice President-elect Carrie Hebert at the Be Heard ticket’s inauguration today at noon at Memorial Tower.
Wells and Bordelon’s Together LSU ticket completed 14 of 22 initiatives, including utilizing Tiger Trails for game days, establishing additional Scantron and blue book distribution locations and instituting a campus-wide sustainability program.
The duo said they also completed an initiative to distribute student parking passes earlier.
Five of the pair’s initiatives are still in progress, including eliminating printed football tickets and protecting student interests from budget cuts.
Wells said he expects the paperless football ticket system to be fully instituted three football seasons from now. Eventually, all students will receive Tiger Cards with a chip planted inside to be “tapped” instead of a magnetic strip to be swiped. The chip will hold all ticket information, including group seating.
A pool of students will receive the Tiger Cards next semester to test out the system at athletic events that already do not require tickets, like basketball games and gymnastics meets.
While Wells and Bordelon say they’ve fought budget cuts through building relationships with legislators and creating the Budget Crisis Taskforce, the University is still at risk.
“Do we still face a challenge? Absolutely,” Wells said.
Wells said he and Bordelon took a “different approach” to fight budget cuts than former SG President J Hudson and Vice President Dani Borel. Wells said he has built relationships internally with legislators, while Hudson and Borel organized what Wells deemed “extremely unsuccessful” Capitol protests.
“The legislators don’t care about who’s on the steps,” he said. “There are much more effective ways than staging protests or rallies.”
Hudson and Borel did, however, officially meet with Gov. Bobby Jindal about the budget crisis, which garnered media attention across the country.
The Together LSU ticket did not complete three specific initiatives, including coordinating with local government to establish more campus lighting.
Wells said although he has not concretely established more on-campus lighting, he has worked with local government to gain lighting around the lakes and on East Boyd Drive.
Wells and Bordelon began their first weeks in office as the University attracted national attention when communication studies graduate student Benjamin Haas attempted to burn an American flag. Wells appeared on Fox News when he organized a “Patriotic Assembly,” but he received criticism from other students and SG members who claimed he abused his position and was the subject of a University Court trial.
A year later, Wells doesn’t regret his decision.
“LSU showed the entire nation that even though you have the right to do something doesn’t mean you should do it,” he said.
Not long after the protests, the University of Alabama suffered from a violent tornado. Students organized Tigers for the Tide, a charity program that collected donations for Tuscaloosa communities.
Bordelon said Tigers for the Tide was the “epitome” of the Together LSU campaign.
“The Tigers for the Tide was exactly what Cody and I ran on, bringing the student body together,” she said.
Wells said the most stressful aspect of being SG president was learning how to handle criticism and “personal attacks.”
“I didn’t know how to handle the degrading things and the attacks that people made on my character and me as an individual because they didn’t agree with the decisions I was making,” he said.
Wells said he came back to campus for the spring semester with a “new outlook.”
“You got to have a thick skin and disregard the baseless and personal attacks people make on you,” he said.
 
 
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Contact Danielle Kelley at [email protected].