Editor’s Note: With this week being Election Week for the 60th session of the Syracuse University Student Association, The Daily Orange is profiling the three candidates campaigning for president.

They’ve only known each other for a few months, but Eric Evangelista and Joyce LaLonde know the differences in how they write emails.

“I do very flowery, long emails,” Evangelista said. “‘Thank you so much for your consideration, I really appreciate it, let me know if there’s anything I can do.’”

“I get to the point,” LaLonde said with a laugh.

Evangelista and LaLonde strike a balance in their new friendship, their new partnership and their campaign for president and vice president, respectively, of Syracuse University’s Student Association. That balance is built on differences, on opposites that, sure enough, seem to attract.

Evangelista, who is currently SA recorder, studies political science, which is more theoretical, LaLonde said, while she studies policy studies, which is more practical. Evangelista speaks quickly, bouncing thoughts off his own ideas. LaLonde speaks slowly, in short sentences. Evangelista is currently the longest-serving member of SA. LaLonde has never been part of SA.

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While Evangelista, a junior history and political science dual major, said he knows how to navigate the bureaucracy and the red tape of working with the university administration, LaLonde, a junior policy studies and public relations dual major, doesn’t have that SA experience, which is what he wanted.

“I really specifically sought out someone who didn’t (have SA experience) because I didn’t want people to say we’re entrenched SA bureaucrats or that we’re too institutional,” he said. “Joyce is bringing that outside knowledge and that outside perspective that I think so many people want.”

Evangelista compared LaLonde’s outsider perspective to that of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and said he, with his institutional knowledge, was more like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Phil Porter, a junior history major who has been heavily involved in SA through his time at SU and has worked on two SA campaigns — including that of current SA President Aysha Seedat and Vice President Jane Hong — said he didn’t want to work on another campaign. But he decided to work on Evangelista and LaLonde’s because he “honestly and earnestly” believes in their campaign.

“I’ve known them separately since day one of my freshman year, and I cannot think of two people who are better qualified to do this,” Porter said. “… Their strengths, their passions really do work well together. I’ve seen this firsthand for the last two months.”

Another difference between Evangelista and LaLonde — aside from Porter’s descriptions of them as an SA “insider” and “outsider,” respectively — is how they approach their platform, CARE, which stands for “Committed to collaboration, Anti-discriminatory, Ready for reform and Excited for excellence.”

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The collaboration and anti-discrimination platforms reflect LaLonde’s “big picture” approach to leading the student body, Evangelista said, whereas the reform and excellence aspects are more on his end of the spectrum since they involve “smaller, minute details that when changed will make a huge impact on the lives of students on campus.”

Initiatives that have been worked on or passed under Seedat and Hong, such as the bike-share program, the push to increase accessibility at the Carrier Dome — which LaLonde called “non-negotiable”— and the installment of heat lamps at campus bus stops, are all initiatives Evangelista and LaLonde plan to continue.

“I know a couple of the other candidates have said they don’t want to do that, or that they want to reexamine the initiatives,” Evangelista said.

“We’re examining them now,” LaLonde added. “Proactively.”

Some of those original initiatives, like Evangelista, are more detail-oriented, while others, like LaLonde, are big picture, long-term.  These initiatives are largely based on conversations the candidates have had with recognized student organizations (RSOs).

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By the end of their term, Evangelista said he and LaLonde would like to have about 50 initiatives of their own.

Evangelista, who once served in SA as director of RSO outreach — a title created for him by former SA President Boris Gresely — said reaching out to students and obtaining data and survey results is something SA has let “fall to the wayside,” adding that he plans to bring back data collection.

As an intra-university transfer student from the College of Visual and Performing Arts, Evangelista wants to install a branch campus of the SU Bookstore at The Warehouse, where many VPA students take classes. He’s in favor of extending library hours, and said he would love to propose 24/7 at Bird Library, adding that he’s cognizant these changes don’t simply happen overnight.

“If we can extend library hours to 12 or 1 a.m., on Fridays and Saturdays, that’s progress,” he said.

Evangelista is also in favor of improving printing capabilities for SU students. In Maxwell and Eggers halls, he said, there are no printers available for use by undergraduate students.

One big picture initiative LaLonde, an orientation leader with University 100, wants to launch is the expansion of the first-year forum into a lecture and dialogue-based system that would focus on one aspect of campus life each week. For example, one week representatives from the Office of Multicultural Affairs or the Counseling Center may come in to talk about the services those campus hubs offer. Then, later in the week, students would break into smaller groups to have conversations about issues that pertain to the office, such as diversity or mental health.

On the Counseling Center itself, Evangelista said he and LaLonde, in a reflection of her big picture thinking, want the university to move the Counseling Center closer to campus, in a place that is safer than near Greek Row, and reform it from the inside as well to make it more accessible to students.

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One way Evangelista said they can realistically do that is to extend the center’s hours so it does not close when many students are just getting out of classes for the day.

And while Evangelista and LaLonde acknowledge that some of their initiatives may not be able to come to fruition in the year that they will be in office, they stressed the importance of planting seeds for future leaders.

“And you know, I get that it’s only student government. I think 20 years from now we hope to have made an impact that’s going to be sustained on this campus and really do something,” Evangelista said. “A lot of people say that, ‘It’s just student government. What does it matter? Who cares?’ but if we are able to do something that’s 20 years from now really significant, that’s really great.”

Published on April 11, 2016 at 11:05 pm

Contact Alexa: atorrens@syr.edu