The Lighthouse Party cheered and embraced each other in the University Center after they triumphed in the 2018 University of Memphis Student Government Association elections.
Kevyanna Rawls and Antonio Scott, the president and vice president candidates of the Lighthouse party, received 57.34 percent of the votes. Echo party candidates Taylor Shennett and Matthew Moore had 42.65 percent of the votes. This year there were 1,865 voters — 418 less than last year’s 2,283 voters.
Although the Lighthouse party won the president and vice president positions, the Echo party won the majority of the senators. Of the 12 senators at-large, eight are from Echo and four are from Lighthouse. For the College Senators, there were also eight from Echo, three Lighthouse and one independent.
This will be Rawls’ second year being in SGA, but instead of vice president, she will now be president and have Scott as her vice president. The newly elected president said the campaign was stressful at times, but she mostly enjoyed it.
“During campaigning, I was extremely stressed and nervous,” Rawls said. “However, I enjoyed the process and everything that came with it. Often I found myself being anxious, but I had to remind myself that these were the times that were meant to be enjoyable and used for bonding.”
Rawls said sometimes she felt distressed when having to deal with the discouraging things being said about the Lighthouse party.
“I believe the hardest part was remaining positive despite some of the negative things I was hearing at the time,” Rawls said. “Although we knew our purpose and why we were working so hard, a lot of people were unfamiliar with Antonio, myself and our party.”
Rawls also said the outcome of the elections was dream-like, and she felt a sense of accomplishment she could not fathom.
“I could not believe it,” Rawls said. “It was extremely surreal. Although this was something that I dreamed about and like to believe we worked hard to achieve, it was a sense of disbelief that it actually happened.”
Scott, the newly elected vice president, said winning the election was emotionally satisfying in every way.
“I haven’t felt that much relief of pressure in a while,” Scott said. “Kevyanna and I were both emotional wrecks. This is something we’ve been working toward a while, and to know we won was such a tear jerker.”
Scott said one of the hardest obstacles during the campaign was getting past the gossip they heard circulated.
“(The hardest part was) keeping the focus on our campaign and not responding or listening to any of the rumors or slander that had surfaced,” Scott said. “I called my mom on a particularly tough day during campaign week, and she reminded me of Michelle Obama’s quote, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ That gave me all the encouragement I needed.”
Scott also said the campaign was tiring and not something everyone could do, but he felt accomplished in the end.
“Honestly it was a mentally, emotionally, socially and physically draining process,” Scott said. “Kevyanna and I, along with everyone on our party, worked so hard, and to know that we came out on top made it so worth it. There were a lot of days we were up past 3 a.m., but nothing comes easy. If running an SGA campaign was a piece of cake, everybody would do it.”
Kevyanna Rawls and Antonio Scott fall to the ground as the hear they won. Rawls and Scott had worked hard to win, and they felt accomplished once they heard the news.
