SGA wraps up first-year elections

First-year representatives Katie Hoang and Reagan Stephens swearing in at the SGA meeting on Tuesday. (Emily Nunez/Marketing and Communications SGA)

By Ella Gonzales, Staff Writer
Published Sep 26, 2022

TCU’s Student Government Association has finalized elections for the class of 2026 representatives. The student body elected Katie Hoang and Reagan Stephens from a slate of 16 nominees. 

This is the last school year that SGA will appoint representatives for each class. In future elections, students will elect representatives based on academic colleges rather than class year. Any student can apply to run.

For the class representative elections, the election board sorts applicants based on how many credit hours they have.  To be considered for the first-year positions, candidates needed to have earned no more than 23 hours.

The two new representatives elected on Sept. 12 were sworn in on Sept. 13. 

Reagan Stephens and Katie Hoang, newly elected first-year reps at their first SGA meeting. (Emily Nunez/Marketing and Communications SGA)

Katie Hoang, a pre-business major, explained her motive to run.

“I want to be that voice for the people that don’t feel that they are empowered enough or know what they want out of their experience here,” Hoang said.

Hoang is a member of Zeta Tau Alpha, club tennis, Neeley Fellows and entrepreneurship club. She founded a non-profit organization called “Dare to Lead,” encouraging students to become leaders through fundraising events.

Reagan Stephens, a political science major, comes with experience from her active involvement in student council in high school. She is a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, the pre-law society and club soccer. 

“My biggest contribution is starting the idea that student government and the student body are one,” Stephens said.

Both said they are focusing on reaching out to their fellow classmates.

“Reaching out to my class every month is really important because Katie and I cannot connect with our class unless we are hearing what they have to say and implementing their ideas,” Stephens said.

Dawson Holder, SGA’s election chair, is excited for future elections this coming year because of how well this last election went. The first-year class cast about 450 votes. This is a larger number of votes than usual. 

2022 presidential election numbers compared to the class of 2026 representative election numbers (Ella Gonzales/TCU360)

“Freshman year elections don’t really get a lot of turnout because they don’t know about it, so 14% of the class is a good trajectory for the future presidential election this spring,” Holder said.