3 Executive Teams Race to the Top

Finch Cantu | Pulse 

Candidates in the upcoming Student Government Association elections introduced themselves and their agendas to University of Texas Rio Grande Valley students at the “Meet the Candidates” events March 25 at the Main Courtyard on the Brownsville campus and March 27 at the Student Union on the Edinburg campus.

According to Delma Olivarez, associate dean of students for Student Involvement, the 2025-2026 SGA elections mark the first time that the races for six positions are contested, as well as the first time students will have three executive tickets on the ballot.

The three executive tickets are:

• Together We Achieve | Juntos Logramos
  • President: Orlando Dylan Alvarado, Jr.
  • Vice President (internal): Otweduampong-ba Ewuradwoa Nketiah
  • Vice President (external): Hannah Emily Martinez
• Team Victoriam
  • President: Juan Espinoza
  • Vice President (internal): Clarissa Rendon
  • Vice President (external): Ian Alfaro
• Vaqueros Forward
  • President: Andrea Gaytan
  • Vice President (internal): Skyler Howell
  • Vice President (external): Isabella Zapata

During the event in Edinburg, candidates sought to gather support for their campaigns and encourage students to vote.

Alvarado said his team is running on a platform of increasing student engagement with university decision-making, strengthening school spirit and improving the student experience.

“We want to work with the students to help create a town hall for departments to come in and explain and break [the usage of student fees] down for students,” Alvarado said. “The information is online, but we want to give the chance for a department to go ahead and speak to the students, answer any questions that they may have and get to explain so that students can understand where the money is going and how it’s affecting them.”

Another part of the platform of Together We Achieve | Juntos Logramos is to help build a sense of community at UTRGV by increasing student engagement. This would mean working with the university to improve upon existing events and to implement more.

Gaytan explained her executive ticket, Vaqueros Forward, is focused on “leading a new era for UTRGV” by working toward several changes for both campuses.

The team’s goals are to address issues of parking in Edinburg and Brownsville, increase advocacy for Brownsville students, reinstate the option to attend commencement in Brownsville, and make Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL)  sessions optional.

“At the moment, we hardly have any Brownsville representation within the Student Government Association,” Gaytan said. “While we were over there for ‘Meet the Candidates’, they have expressed that they want their commencement back. The families have to travel all the way to Edinburg as of right now, and it just doesn’t seem practical. So we want to give the commencement back to the Brownsville campus.”

Espinoza said the platform for the team is to make the SGA into “more of a voice for the students,” by increasing the visibility of the SGA and making PLTL optional.

“We’ve talked to the science department and the math department about this,” Espinoza said, “but we want to have optional PLTL in the course if a student has a B after the midterm. … The science department, a lot of the professors there and department heads, they’re open to the idea … The math department wants it to be an A, but we’re still going to talk to them more about it.”

All three executive teams emphasized the importance of student involvement with the SGA, something that Espinoza said is sorely lacking at UTRGV.

“Go around and talk to people, they don’t know what SGA is. And I think it’s really sad that your tuition goes to SGA, a part of it, the university funds it and it’s an institution no one knows nothing about. And that needs to be changed,” he said.

Students can vote April 7-10 via ballots that will be emailed to each their UTRGV email.