Election time has come again and students are asked to vote not only for next school year’s Student Government Association (SGA) leaders, but also the name of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) soccer and volleyball teams.

However, voting for the NAIA teams is also open to faculty, staff, alumni and administration and was held via Survey Monkey. A link to the ballot was sent to the university e-mail accounts. Voting ends Sunday, April 15.

The team name options are: the Archangels, Lake Hawks, OLLU Saints and Sabers.

As of the April 12 SGA meeting, Vice President of Student Life Jack Hank reported that within the 48 hours that the survey was available, 500 votes were made.

SGA elections took place April 11 and 12 in the cafeteria hallway. The candidates running for president included Marco Cepeda and Mariana Juarez. Juarez, who currently serves on SGA as director of leadership development, told students she intends to increase publicity around campus if elected. She also wants to increase the involvement of Greek life.

Cepeda, a junior double majoring in political science and psychology, expressed an interest in leading a more grassroots effort consisting of speaking directly to students in the classrooms to get their opinion on issues.

“The reason for student apathy is that students don’t know what’s going on,”
Cepeda said.

Steven Montoya is the lone candidate running for vice president. He states that he intends to find a unique way to “give back to the community.” He also wants to provide a “greater sense of interaction” between the students and SGA.

Junior Sam Acosta, a political science major, is running for director of leadership development and he reiterated the topic of student involvement and awareness. He proposes to “let the student body know what’s going on in the campus.”

Richaundra Darden is running for upper-class representative. The business management major discussed the lack of information throughout the campus.

“I believe there’s a large portion of the campus that’s uninformed,” Darden said.

Another candidate running for upper-classman representative is Ted Mendoza, a sophomore majoring in finance. He wants to follow the rally of his fellow candidates and get more student involvement on campus.

Yesica Rocha, a freshman majoring in biology, is running for sophomore representative.

With the current state of the university, student leaders are hoping to pave the way for the next school year to be a year of change, one in which the students get out and talk about the issues that relate to them.