Omar Ratrut, junior political science major, and sophomore Madelyn Stovall, sophomore political science major, are the new president and vice president for the 2025-2026 school year. Each class also got five senators, a mixture of returning and new SGA members.
Students began voting for class senators, president and vice president on Monday, March 24. Current president and election committee member Joy Areola announced the winners on March 28 in an email.
Two candidates ran for president, both having experience in SGA. Ratrut served in the Senate and became DEI chair for SGA this spring, but said he wanted to grow in his SGA involvement.
“As a cabinet member, you don’t necessarily have a vote when it comes to funding proposals or amendments,” Ratrut said. “The next step for me was a place that I wanted to facilitate a lot of the discussions or the meetings in SGA, so I thought president was a good fit.”
SGA handles thousands of dollars and has the potential to impact campus life in many ways. Ratrut addressed the subject of SGA appearing disconnected from student life and wants to ensure members are seen engaging with student-run events.
“A lot of the time, us as members of SGA aren’t really at these community events that we are helping fund,” Ratrut said. “I think as representatives of our community, it’s our responsibility to be active and engaged with our peers and fellow students.”
The vice president is charged with mostly financial duties, including leading the finance committee and managing the Student Activity Fee. For Stovall, her favorite aspect of SGA is the financial side.
“I feel like I’ve always kind of advocated for distributing our finances as fairly as we can,” Stovall said. “It just made the most sense stepping into the vice president role.”
Both incoming presidential candidates spoke with current President Areola and Vice President Allison Waters about the workload and their intentions to run before making it official. Stovall didn’t imagine running for a presidential role until her senior year, but Waters put the idea on Stovall’s radar.
“Allison showed me her workload and everything, and it’s definitely a lot. It’s not an easy job — president or vice president,” Stovall said. “But it only solidified that it was something that I was interested in doing since it’s work that I’ve been really passionate about from the Senate side.”
The majority of SGA is made up of senators, who are responsible for communicating the thoughts of the student body and representing their interests. Andrew Cernosek, first-year business analytics major and incoming sophomore senator, appreciated SGA’s structure.
“I really like the way that it’s formatted. It seems very structured, very organized and just like a nice place to be around,” Cernosek said. “The student council I was part of in high school was way less structured than this.”
Each student class has five senators, but each person brings different experiences. William Regan, first-year political science major and incoming sophomore senator, aims to use SGA to help underclassmen learn soft skills to start their careers.
“I hope to give a helping hand wherever I can and in other initiatives, but this is why I want the platform,” Regan said. “Connecting people to career opportunities early on is pretty important just because I feel like everybody deserves to be able to go specialize in what they want to do.”
In the fall, the class of 2029 will vote on their representatives and two vacancies in the class of 2026 will be filled. For now, the incoming elected team has to prepare for next year.
“The last week, I’ve just been filled with an immense amount of gratitude,” Ratrut said. “Now, obviously, all the hard work lies ahead, so I’m ready to get the new year started.”
