The “Power Duo” of SGA has been everywhere during the last two years. You went to a Breaking Bread club meeting with Joseph Pool and shared dinner with people from different cultural experiences. You heard Eltavious Johnson perform a solo in the chapel for the annual Christmas Vespers. You saw both, during different years and in different meetings, strike the gavel when it was time to move to new business. You met either of them somewhere on campus – perhaps on the way from Sutton to Lakeside, or on the path to the new tennis court, or in a political science or keyboard harmony class.
But their identity has been centered around an organization that, over the past two years, has gone from being one of many student organizations on campus to the nerve center of how our college campus functions.
During my freshman year, in fall 2022, I met both Eltavious and Joseph. Eltavious and I were both students in Dr. Cook’s keyboard harmony class; Joseph and I both ran for class senator as soon as we could join SGA. But it was in the fall of 2024, when Eltavious and the “Poolitician” began their first of two terms as president and vice-president, that they began their transformative role for student representation on campus.
The first goal for the Joseph-Eltavious team – Joseph served as president the first year, before they swapped roles for 2025-2026 – was to build sufficient rapport with the college’s administration to advocate for policies. Their starting point, as Eltavious put it when we met following the presidential debate, was that “student government is a privilege not found at every institution. We’re very lucky to have a connection and relationship with our administration here.” When they wanted to raise a concern with administration, they did it with a “gentle spirit.”
As Eltavious described this strategy: “I lead in with inquisition and questions: ‘why have we done it this way?’ or ‘where can student voices come in?’”
However, building a relationship with administration proved to be only one of the many challenges the duo faced over their years as president and vice-president of SGA. Current president Eltavious noted: “The role of President is not easy; you learn information before the rest of the student body, along with safety concerns, and things that will affect you as a student. And the thing you as a representative of the students remember is, if the administration can’t trust SGA’s President and VP, they get bypassed.”
Each week, they find themselves in 20-25 hours of meetings, between conversations with admin and with our Exec Boards, Senate meetings, and working with students. At times, balancing their workload with their coursework is a major challenge.
A further challenge they wrestled with during both years was the tight timeline on which Senate operates. SGA is a very compressed timeline for change, given the “string of events” that occurs during both the fall and the spring semesters. Elections, filling new positions, and class exams all tighten the schedule during which SGA can get work done on campus.
Outside SGA, their separate but related roles – such as Eltavious’ role on the presidential search committee last year – contribute to their workload. Task force activities typically include “a lot of reading applications, attending committee meetings, voting and selecting. It’s a very intense process. Students don’t see it, but it impacts their student life across so many aspects of the campus.” Joseph, as vice president of SGA, noted that he and Eltavious meet with college president Brooke Barnett biweekly to discuss student priorities and upcoming administrative decisions.
Joseph, as president of SGA from 2024-2025, attributed several successes to his past administration and Eltavious’ presidency this year: bringing president Barnett to lead a Q&A session for a Senate meeting; filling all Senate positions; adding new positions for commuter students, transfer students, Dining Services, Spiritual Life, and Title IX/SOAR; raising $50,000 for financial aid this year; presenting to the President’s Administrative Council; and raising $24,000 for financial aid during a 24-hour donor challenge last year.
The duo’s mark, though, was felt the most in a subtle way at the SGA’s presidential debate. There were no ad hominem attacks. Both presidents and vice-presidents had praise for the student body’s current direction and held a positive outlook for the future. One of the candidates, during their opening statement, summarized that future in a few words: “Passion and a fresh set of eyes.”
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