The UNITY ticket is headed by Amina Meselhe, a civil engineering junior and presidential candidate, and her running mate, geography junior Preston White. 

The pair have been friends since they started at LSU, and they said there was a “mutual understanding” that they should take their last opportunity to run for SG and change the culture from the inside out. 

“When we were freshmen and sophomores, we watched SG take credit for initiatives and changes on campus that came from the efforts of other student organizations, not just SG,” Meselhe said. “Blackout LSU in the summer of 2020 was organized by student leaders across campus. It was groundbreaking, and SG swooped in and took credit for it.”

She said that, if elected on March 24, UNITY will amplify the ideas of students across campus without claiming the ideas as their own. 

“We want to provide student organizations with the resources and connections to grow their ideas,” Meselhe said. “SG should be a platform for movements that need to be amplified.”

Amplification is one of the pillars of the UNITY campaign, along with accountability and advocacy, according to the campaign’s website. UNITY’s Tiger Talks serve to share resources that often go unnoticed or unused with students who need them. 

Meselhe said when she was a Freshman Leadership Council small group leader, she noticed SG members taking advantage of freshmen and their need to feel included on a new campus. She said that students coming out of high school are eager to be part of something and that SG told freshmen which ideas to support instead of giving them avenues to implement their own initiatives. 

“It wasn’t an environment of growth,” Messelhe said. “SG retreated into itself, which is sad because it has the resources and manpower to extend its reach across campus.”

She said the most frustrating aspect of her time in SG was the culture of pride and politics that permeates the organization.

“There’s just this divide between branches of SG,” Meselhe said. “There was more time arguing about the minutia than actually making a difference with students. It has to do with pride, but most students don’t know who’s in Senate or who’s in the executive branch anyway. They don’t know or care whose name is on the initiative, just that the change is made.”

She said she and White will work to remind the branches of SG that they work as a force to implement change, a force that, if unified, presents a strong front against injustices on campus. 

White served his first position in SG as assistant director of nontraditional students in Spring 2021. He said he enjoyed holding events to bring student organizations together, and he’s realized a need for SG to uplift the voices of nontraditional students.

“I’ve seen just how passionate my department is,” White said. “People who don’t get their voices heard and don’t get the attention they deserve have come to us and told us the problems they face because they believe that we can do something about it. With UNITY, we plan to grow those ideas by collaborating with the students who face those issues.”

Mass communication junior Melissa Kim is managing the six-person ticket and its staff. She served as deputy chief of staff under SG President Stone Cox and said she thought she would not be involved in SG again. She changed her mind when Meselhe asked her to run the UNITY campaign. 

 “Amina and Preston are building this authentic campaign, and I’ve seen their hearts and their character, so when they came to ask if I wanted to be a part of their staff, I agreed,” Kim said. 

One of UNITY’s core policy points is to support and aid in the creation of a Black Marketplace, a space in which Black students, organizations and businesses can promote their ideas, initiatives and products during Wild Out Wednesdays. The administration would build the Black Marketplace up, as students in NPHC fraternities and sororities are hosting a smaller version of the event.

“The Wild Out Wednesdays have been central to a celebration of Black students and their joy and pride,” UNITY said. “Our mission is to expand on the event and uplift POC on our campus.”

Meselhe, a Muslim daughter of Egyptian and Chinese immigrants, said that diversity is at the core of UNITY’s campaign.

“We go to a predominantly white institution, so we see a lot of white students trying to speak for people of color and championing their ideas,” Meselhe said. “We want to reinstate the President’s Cabinet, where the presidents of student organizations get together to discuss ideas as a group.”

She said this coalition would encourage joint initiatives and allow student organizations to work together and share resources. White said that the cabinet would get student leaders who don’t normally connect to consider the problems they have in common and work as one unified front to fix them.

Meselhe and White said that UNITY is a grassroots campaign that is garnering funds from the community instead of requiring its supporters to pay campaign dues. They said that they don’t want to force students to pay to see change, especially considering the financial state of most college students.