Campaign Week Recap: Miss Senior, Miss Freshman Announced

The start of the week of September 9 brought with it posters and signs, campaign tables, and hopeful candidates taking pictures and giving out free food and merch as campaign week ramped up. Campaign week happens annually as upper and lower classmen vie to fill various positions within the Student Government Association.
The SGA has a cabinet made up of a president, vice-president, three senators, and two justices from each matriculating class of students to represent the values and issues of their respective student populations as they continue their studies at Southern. 
SGA also offers four titles within the Royal Court for young women:  Miss Freshman, Miss Sophomore, Miss Junior, and Miss Senior for each of the respective graduating classes. If the class president and cabinet is the voice of each year of students, then the class queen is the face as each one of them serve as the class representative for special events outside of Southern.
The available spots for this year’s campaign week were Freshman class president and cabinet, four justices and five senators spread out among the four classes along with Miss Freshman and Miss Senior. The Association for Women Students, a branch of SGA that represents all the women on campus, also had an open position for vice president. 
As the positions for Junior and Senior class president and cabinet were already filled, the most closely watched election this year was the race between candidates vying for Miss Freshman and Miss Senior. Dominique Taylor from Mobile, Alabama and Hayley Wesley from Shrevport, Louisiana were the two candidates running for Miss Freshman while Desrael Dumas from Winnsboro, Louisiana and Tamiko Stroud from Donaldsonville, Louisiana were campaigning for Miss Senior.
The two candidates for Miss Senior each have different but equally selfless reasons for why they are going through the trouble of campaigning. Tamikio Shroud wants help students as they prepare to transition from college student to professional, “I just want to make sure I can pass the knowledge I’ve learned these past three years on to others to ease their transition from college to beginning their career,” while Desrael Dumas is focused on improving campus unity, “I want to become Miss Senior because I want to bring unity to the senior class as well as implement programs that are geared towards life after college.”
Throughout the week the four candidates participated in various events to promote themselves and speak in front of the student body and state why they are the most worthy of the title of Miss Freshman or Senior. Thursday brought with it the Fall Revue, a pageant designed to just that as the contenders showcase themselves in front of the student body in as they show off not only their grace and style, but also their intelligence through a live interview with the Elections Committee.
The Elections Commissioner of the Student Government Association, Ariel Briggs, explained that she wanted things to make sure the candidates understood the weight of each of the titles, “the Elections Committee is more hands-on with the candidates this year. We want to make sure that the candidates have a better understanding of the code.” As the class queens are used by the university in marketing and at public events, it’s understandable that they face a large amount of scrutiny, ““[The expectations for the candidates is that] they uphold the campaigns that they pushed all week and represent the university in a good light.”
While each of the candidates were deserving of their respective titles for class queen, there could only ever be two winners. The results were announced on Friday, September 13, and saw Desrael Dumas and Dominique Taylor being crowned as Miss Senior and Miss Freshman respectively.

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Dominique Taylor a freshman political science major from Mobile, AL stares in awe as she is announced as the 2019-2020 MIss Freshman elect on September 13 in front of the Smith-Brown Memorial Union. (Kyndall Jones/DIGEST)