EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second in a three-part series showcasing the Student Government presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The stories will run in alphabetical order, according to the last name of the presidential candidate.
One qualification sets Andrew Mahtook apart from the past two Student Government presidents — a Student Senate background.
In the run for their presidential SG office, Andrew Mahtook and Hannah Knight launched a surprise campaign Feb. 8.
“We felt like we weren’t going to be able to keep that momentum up. Students don’t want to be pestered by campaigns for months and months,” Mahtook said. “And we didn’t want to take a kind of passive social media launch. We wanted, when we launched, to be full force, [with] everything [we] have.”
The “Here & Now” campaign focuses on changes students with even one semester left will benefit from, instead of promises candidates cannot keep, Mahtook said.
Mahtook and Knight said they want to fix the “That’s just the way it is” problems students encounter on a daily basis.
Parking and fixing the Studio Arts Building are issues students often bring up, Mahtook said. “Here & Now” looks to find realistic approaches to these problems because building parking towers and parking lots or repairing a 100-year-old building is unrealistic, Mahtook said.
“We want to implement a shuttle system,” Mahtook said. “[It would] run all day and make a loop from the far out commuter lots to the Bell Tower.”
For the Studio Arts Building, Mahtook said he could provide temporary cooling systems, a short-term solution for the non-air-conditioned building.
“With the budget cuts coming, we know that campus is going to be even more strained for cash. So these huge initiatives really aren’t going to be realizable. We want to try to be as realistic as possible,” he said.
Instead of just wanting the lakes to be safer, Mahtook said his team wants to work with campus police to patrol the area and educate people who walk the lakes at night.
How they constructed their initiatives was different from other tickets, Knight said.
“The initiatives that our campaign runs on, have those come from our candidates instead of just presenting them with initiatives that we came up with and saying ‘Support these,’” Knight said.
Getting students to their jobs after graduation is also a campaign commitment.
The “Built by LSU” initiative will allow students in different concentrations to use what they have studied and let them apply it through jobs on campus. A part of Mahtook’s proposal is to hire students for projects instead of going to outside firms.
Students will have a greater sense of pride for the University if their hands-on experience affects the campus they will visit in the future, Mahtook said.
“Why are we going to outside firms? Why don’t we just have students who studied that for four years make that change,” he said.
Although the pair are both involved in student senate and Greek Life, Knight said her and Mahtook are the best pair together because of their outreach to different campus leadership.
The duo wants to foster a better dialogue between the student body and SG.
“We want to kind of get where students walk, where students interact, and kind of force them to talk to us,” Mahtook said. “I think it’s hypocritical to say ‘We’re connecting with students’ by just putting our email out.”
“Here & Now” aims to break the barrier between student organizations and SG and create a support staff for student organizations who seek funding or consulting from SG.
“The reason we wanted to run for the two top spots is because we see how much Student Government’s done, but we feel like a lof of the change is centered on what will be done in the future and one of the big parts we’re missing out on is what we can do right now,” Mahtook said.

Gallery • 2 Photos

Emily Brauner

LSU finance junior Andrew Mahtook (left) and communication disorders junior Hannah Knight (right) run for student government president and vice president for the 2015 Fall semester under the Here & Now ticket.