Student Government Association Sen. Cheydon Naleimaile-Evangelista (CCAS-U) announced his bid for SGA vice president Friday, becoming the second candidate to enter the vice presidential race.
Naleimaile-Evangelista, a sophomore majoring in political communication from Hilo, Hawaii, said if elected to the vice presidency he plans to advocate for professors to release course syllabi a week before classes start, improving the accessibility of facilities on campus and increasing the SGA’s internal diversity. He said his experience as the current chair of the SGA’s Financial Services and Allocations Committee — which handles funding requests from student organizations — and former chair of the Student Life Committee has instilled in him the qualifications and experience he needs to bring change to GW’s campus and the SGA.
Naleimaile-Evangelista said as vice president, he would also advocate for officials to maintain expanded dining hall hours during exam periods and revamp Title IX training for students, staff and faculty to ensure GW is a “violence-free campus.” He said during his time as an SGA senator this year he has heard innumerable complaints from students about issues like campus accessibility and dining hours, which inspired his run for vice president.
“It was because of the conversations I’ve had with students on what we need to change here at GW, that is why I wanted to run,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said.
Naleimaile-Evangelista said professors are currently only mandated by the University to release their course syllabi to students on the first day of class, which he said prevents students from planning out their travel over academic breaks and determining if the content they will learn will further their academic goals. He said most department heads already require faculty to submit syllabi weeks before the semester begins, and giving students earlier access could help them decide whether to drop a course, freeing up waitlists for other students.
“When students see professors being more proactive, then they can drop a class, add a class, be taken off the waitlist for a class a lot faster,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said.
He said he will partner with the Faculty Senate to draft legislation for professors to release course syllabi earlier or work out a compromise where faculty will release past syllabi for students to preview. GW currently offers a syllabus bank on Blackboard, where students can see past semesters’ syllabi, but professors only uploaded 63 syllabi to the bank last semester, compared to 502 in fall 2019 when the bank first launched, and the Faculty Senate sent a resolution to professors asking them to participate.
Naleimaile-Evangelista said he has heard complaints from students about a lack of physical accessibility to campus facilities, especially in District House, where foot traffic of students visiting Peet’s Coffee tends to block one of the dorm’s accessibility doors. He said the button to open the door to enter the dorm’s residential area has also broken several times this year and was only recently repaired.
Naleimaile-Evangelista said he would ask facilities personnel to attach signs near every automatic door button on campus with a QR code and instructions on how to report broken equipment to FixIt.
Naleimaile-Evangelista said he would also work to continue expanding GW dining hall hours during exam periods after a successful pilot program launched last fall where officials kept Shenkman Dining Hall open until midnight during final exams. He said students widely used the extra hours during exams, and he would also ask officials to expand the hours during midterm season in the spring and fall, not just finals.
“It’s not like no one’s showing up,” he said. “There were a lot of students, at least when I was there, that were eating food there and maybe even studying in the dining hall as well.”
Naleimaile-Evangelista said he was concerned about the rise in Title IX reports last academic year — with the Title IX Office reporting 494 complaints, the highest recorded number since it began annual reports in 2022 — and he thinks the problem could be solved in part by instituting more mandatory University-wide Title IX training sessions for students, faculty and staff. The University currently requires all incoming first-year and transfer students to complete an online and in-person Title IX training but does not mandate any further training after students’ first year.
The SGA passed the Survivors Bill of Rights in fall 2024 to consolidate Title IX resources and establish a peer adviser program, which helps students involved in the Title IX process navigate resources and offer emotional support during intake hearings. Naleimaile-Evangelista said in addition to this program, he would focus on reworking training to bolster preemptive action against violence on campus.
He said students often feel uncomfortable interacting with officials in the Title IX office, and student groups, like Students Against Sexual Assault, do a better job than the office itself of reaching out to affected students and helping them navigate the process.
“I don’t think that it should fall on students to take in all this information because I think it can be a lot for those students as well,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said. “And I think we just need to commit ourselves to being more of a welcoming campus and one that is committed to violence free.”
Naleimaile-Evangelista said as vice president he wants to continue to increase the SGA Senate’s diversity, and although the body is the most diverse in its history this year, he still sees gaps in the SGA’s inclusion of minorities. He said as the only Native Hawaiian senator in the SGA, as vice president he would work to reach out directly to students of diverse backgrounds to bring them into the governing body.
“I think not a lot of students see or envision themselves because they don’t see anyone like them within the SGA,” Naleimaile-Evangelista said.
Naleimaile-Evangelista collected the required 359 student signatures and will appear on the ballot for the April 16-17 elections, pending verification from the Joint Elections Commission.