With Student Government’s spring election approaching, multiple campaigns have their sights set on becoming president and vice president of the organization’s new administration.
Each election season brings a group of students hopeful to make LSU a better campus, but this election season, candidates expressed that their decisions to run were born less out of desire and more out of need.
Criminology and political science junior Javin Bowman is the presidential candidate for the Bowman-Milligan campaign. Bowman said that he and his running mate, political science, Spanish and international studies junior Abbie Grace Milligan have the passion, connections and SG experience to tackle issues that students have been begging leaders at LSU to handle.
“In our previous SG experience, students haven’t always seen the effects of the work we’re supposed to be doing,” Milligan said. “We want to establish an effort to get the student body to understand the impact SG has and that we have the ability to give them resources to address their concerns.”
One of these concerns is greater accountability regarding how LSU handles an investigation into claims that the school mishandled reports of sexual misconduct on campus, and candidates are ready to fight for more victim protections.
As co-founder of Tigers Against Sexual Assault, psychology and English junior Angelina Cantelli plans to bring her passion for preventing sexual violence to her office as vice president if she were to be elected. Cantelli is running on a campaign called “It’s Time.” If she and presidential candidate and mass communication junior Mia LeJeune are elected, they’ll be the first all-female administration.
“Mia and I are ready to hold administration accountable,” Cantelli said. “As Vice President of TASA, I’ve had to have conversations with administration about Title IX. The policies and processes present conflicts of interest that need to be addressed.”
Civil engineering junior Amina Messelhe is running for president alongside geography junior Preston White on a ticket entitled “Unity.” Among other platforms like education and safety, their campaign works to address issues of diversity and inclusion on LSU’s campus.
“Diversity is the core of our campaign,” Messelhe said. “As a Muslim, Chinese and Egyptian woman, it’s my identity– how I approach the world. Preston is a Black man from out of state. As Black and brown students attending a PWI, we see students trying to champion our ideas, so we want to promote diversity in all aspects of our administration.”
Political science and history junior Ethan Lauvray and his vice-presidential running mate, political science junior Kalie Gonzales are running their campaign, SPARC, on five platforms. Their fourth platform, “revive,” focuses on connecting students to SG and encouraging transparency in SG that they feel like has been lacking in past semesters.
“Often SG can feel closed off and secretive,” Lauvray said. “We plan to host virtual town halls during our campaign and into our administration to keep us connected with the students directly.”
Students can’t officially register their campaigns until February, but hopefuls host interest meetings, build campaign staffs and start social media campaigns in the meantime with hopes of garnering support from fellow students.
