The winners for the Los Medanos College Associated Students cabinet elections have been announced. Senator Priscilla Tatmon will be President, Senator Marayah Guinto will be Vice President, Senator Earl Russell Almazan will be Treasurer, Senator Sierra Abel will be Commissioner of Campus Events and Senator Jessica Quintos will be Commissioner of Publicity and Outreach.

Candidates ran unopposed for their positions in the election. While Tatmon and Guinto did start the race with opponents, they both eventually dropped out due to personal or logistical matters.

“LMCAS student officers represent the LMC student community. Voting provides LMC students the opportunity to choose who they want to represent them,” Student Life Coordinator John Nguyen stated. “[Even if the candidates are running unopposed] students still have the right to choose who they would like to represent them.”

A common theme among new officers is a desire to increase campus and community engagement and involvement among LMC’s student body.

“I know students are just trying to go to school and come home,” said Tatmon, who hopes to be able “to show that there’s better opportunities, there’s more things that we can provide and help with.”

Tatmon also expressed a commitment to assist in the promotion of existing clubs as well as the creation of new ones, calling clubs a fun de-stress mechanism. Beyond clubs, many officers also wanted to increase participation and attendance rates in LMC’s many campus events.

“Our main goal as a board is to make the LMC community more of an active community,” Guinto said. “I know a lot of students just see LMC as a place to come, go to class and then leave. At LMCAS I think my main goal is trying to engage the students [into] actually attending the events that we have, getting more involved with the community and really experiencing what LMC has to offer in regards to the groups and diversity that we have here on campus.”

As the new Commissioner of Campus Events, Abel echoed these sentiments, focusing on a push for “more events where it will include the entire school… to bring together a closer community” and proposed new events such as a Student Olympics in the same vein as the Three-on-Three Basketball Tournament and more awareness events similar to Jocelyn Villalobos’s Sexual Violence Awareness Month.

Quintos, as Commissioner of Publicity and Outreach, stated she plans to increase LMCAS’s social media presence in order to “get people excited to go to and participate” in events, especially on Instagram and also by getting students involved in promotional videos. Almazan also stated an online community focus for his candidacy.

“I hope to use my position as Treasurer to find the best possible way to fund a social network for LMC students as accessed through their Insite account,” Almazan said. “I was thinking that having a social network to get early students linked up with their fellow peers at a much earlier stage in college would be great… I just want to make sure that other people who come into LMC can become part of the community a hell of a lot faster than I was able to.”

Almazan also stated he plans to shift more funding into zero textbook cost sections.

Despite the fact that the candidates all ran unopposed, they have not been resting on their laurels during the campaign.

“I’m still trying to campaign,” Guinto stated. “Go up to students and talk to them, tell them what I’m trying to do as Vice President, see if they have any concerns as to what they’d like to see change in the following semesters and basically… what they as students, think we could do better to improve their lives here.”

For an administration seemingly unified by its commitment to greater student engagement, they have started early by trying to get students involved in the process.

“It’s been a challenge,” Tatmon stated. “What I’ve been doing [is] going around asking different people if they know about student government… a lot of people said they didn’t, so now I hope to provide more awareness about what I do and how I can help.”