Updated March 12 at 9:13 p.m. EST.
Candidates were announced for the 2025-26 Temple Student Government election in a Town Hall at the Howard Gittis Student Center Wednesday. Two campaigns, each including a presidential and vice presidential candidate, announced their bid for office at the event.
The campaigns are Temple Tomorrow, led by Lourdes Cardamone and Janeese Hochstetler, and TUnited, led by Yaam Malka and William Walker.
Both campaigns presented their policy initiatives to students, covering areas like finances, transparency and opening an environment for student feedback.
A debate between the candidates will take place on March 24, with elections two days later on March 26. The Temple News will be moderating the debate.
Temple Tomorrow
Cardamone, a junior political science major and current president of Temple Democrats and TSG’s current chief of external affairs, is the presidential candidate for Temple Tomorrow. Cardamone was also a campus fellow for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, where she advocated for college students to vote.
Hochstetler, a junior advertising major, is Cardamone’s prospective vice president. She was the director of outreach and engagement for TSG in 2023-24 under former TSG President Rohan Khadka. She interns with Temple Athletics and has done work with intramural sports.
The duo outlined their initiatives for their campaign in multiple categories. They want to focus on uniting the student body through promoting student voices and accessibility. One of their priorities is to add diversity, equity and inclusion to TSG’s Executive Office of Leadership, allowing for further DEI committees and resources for student organizations.
Temple Tomorrow also wants to relieve students’ financial burdens by providing second hand graduation gowns, open education resources and hosting emergency fundraisers. They hope to expand safety resources on campus like the FLIGHT shuttle , an initiative that TSG has worked to improve this year.
“I think the biggest part of this campaign is that we are students,” Cardamone said. “We both work two student jobs, three student jobs. We’re in sororities, we’re student leaders. We’re in this, we’re in that. We’re doing everything. And that’s really important, because that’s exactly who we represent.”
TUnited
Malka is the presidential candidate for TUnited. She is a sophomore psychology and political science major. Malka has been an active campus activist, protesting for the release of Israeli hostages in the latest Israel-Hamas war.
TUnited’s vice presidential candidate, Walker, is a junior political science and secondary education major and the former vice-chairman for Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans. He was a campaign intern for Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick in Fall 2024.
He also served as the Chairman of Temple’s chapter of College Republicans, but said he would step down upon filing for TSG candidacy, a source told The Temple News. The position is no longer listed on his LinkedIn or OwlConnect.
The candidates outlined their policy efforts in transparency and equity, safety, campus life and wellbeing and unity. They want to bring a student government that is fully transparent in the work they do, which TUnited said should include publishing minutes for meetings that list the topic and participants.
TUnited emphasized campus efficiency through regularly maintaining safety tools like the blue light phones on and off-campus.
The campaign also wants to bring back the concept of a student senate in TSG to encourage unity between the body and students. TSG dissolved its student parliament due to its “inefficiency” after then-president Gianni Quattrocchi was elected in 2022, The Temple News reported.
TUnited wants to form a senate that has one person per graduating class in each of Temple’s undergraduate colleges to encourage involvement and representation.
As on-campus activism is under scrutiny by the federal government, both candidates stated they support free speech as long as the protests are respectful.
“We care about these issues,” Walker said. “We learn about a lot of them and talk about them in political science. A lot of good has come from protesting. I think back to the grad student teacher strikes, those were really powerful movements that resulted in great things happening.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated that Temple Tomorrow aims to instate a diversity, equity and inclusion position in Temple Student Government’s Internal Affairs department. It has since been corrected to reflect the campaign’s hopes to add the position to the Executive Office of Leadership.
Be the first to comment