A glance at some of your SGA electoral candidates

As the University of Louisiana at Lafayette approaches Spring Break, a decision must be made before Good Friday arrives: Who will serve in SGA for the 2026-27 school year? The Student Government Association (SGA), per the University’s website, is “an elected body of student representatives that works to improve and enhance students’ lives.” SGA meets weekly in an attempt to gauge how they can assist students, campus and administration.

The scope SGA has is vast; they can create small college projects to improve the campus environment or they can even pitch to alter students-assessed fees. Towards the latter half of each Spring semester, next year’s office member must be voted on.

Some positions include president, vice president, treasurer, the president and senators for each college, various secretary positions, committees members and more. The two parties campaigning this year, Spark and Vision, both are composed of over 80 members each. The “Big 3” as it is called are the president, vice president, and treasurer candidates; every student, graduate and undergraduate, votes on these three.

The Vermilion conducted interviews with some of the candidates for Spark and Vision. The Big 3 for Spark are Emily Lamkin, Zackari Rodgers and Grayson Kervin for president, vice president and treasurer. For Vision, their Big 3 are Brenden Daigle, Gabrille St. Pierre and Isaac Fife, respectively. 

Both parties were formed shortly after last year’s elections, where the previous two parties were Impact and Evolve. After concluding the election, the parties are dissolved and new ones emerge the following year. Many currently serving members are re-running and were previously part of the Impact party from last school year.

Regarding the majors and classifications of your presidential and vice presidential candidates, Lamkin is a senior majoring in political science, Rodgers is a senior double majoring in economics and accounting, Daigle is a junior majoring in cybersecurity and St. Pierre is a junior majoring in civil engineering. All four of these members have previous SGA experience. Lamkin currently serves as senate chair, Rodgers currently serves as treasurer, Daigle currently serves as vice president and St. Pierre currently serves as chief of staff.

Now, when it comes to this year’s parties at a glance, each has their own core values. Spark, according to Lamkin, serves as a way for students to “have a continued say in the conversation” beyond their initial votes. Daigle and St. Pierre described Vision as having four pillars: student experience, service and support, streamlined education and organizational and community involvement.

The role of president of SGA is more “external” according to Daigle. “The president is supposed to focus externally and pass initiatives…encourage positive change on campus. And they’re the main leader when it comes to making real change on campus using the executive budget that SGA has with student fees.” The role of vice president is more internal according to Lamkin. She said the role serves to “handle those internal affairs, um, college projects, making sure… everything is working properly in SGA.” 

The presidential and vice presidential candidates were each asked what they might do differently next year should they make office this election. Lamkin said she’d aim to further encourage and invite students to attend SGA town halls by providing SGA “ask me anything” tabling events. Rodgers said he wanted to “write stuff down” and elaborated how easy it is for project ideas to get lost in translation during delegations.

Daigle wants to “encourage students to actually support these initiatives with their vote.” He hopes to invite student voices for “encouragement of what they want to see their money spent for.” St. Pierre mentioned that she wants to ensure that SGA is always growing, that it should never be a “stagnant organization.”

The parties had some overlapping college projects they wanted to try and implement to improve the campus environment. For example, providing access to free scantrons in more buildings. Some Spark specific ideas mentioned include getting student organizations to come present some of their own ideas for the first five or 10 minutes of SGA meetings. Lamkin mentioned that this was something she brought up previously to try and ensure that as many students can “be a part of the conversation.”

Vision’s unique topics they wanted to focus on were fee transparency via using SGA’s website to promote and showcase what initiatives SGA is putting money into, creating more committees within SGA to “increase diversity of representation in SGA as a whole” according to St. Pierre and an emphasis on campus food scarcity. This is especially amongst student athletes who have had their promised number of meals a week cut from 14 to three due to the University’s budget crisis.

Now, of all the possibilities that lie in these party’s project ideas, we wanted to gauge what each candidate’s top area of interest was. Essentially, should they make office, what is their priority project?

Lamkin said that her “passion project” was creating more red zone awareness. The red zone is the period from the beginning of the school year to Thanksgiving break where sexual assaults are at their highest likelihood to occur. Lamkin proposed many ways to generate awareness and provide students a variety of resources from cup covers to self-defense classes. For Rodgers, he answered with Cajun Wallet. This idea was originally pitched in last year’s campaign under the Impact party, but has turned into a multi-year project Rodgers hopes to still implement.

On Vision’s end of things, Daigle and St. Pierre both re-emphasized creating a forum on SGA’s website to further encourage direct feedback and reaching out from students and organizations alike. 

This is only a glance at the parties, a few of their candidates and some of their intended projects and priorities. SGA elections will be held all day from April 1-2 with the ballot being sent to your UL email. All students are allowed to vote on the Big 3 and you also can cast a vote for the candidates running for office in your respective college.