UofL’s Student Government Association kicks off the 2023–2024 school year with some familiar faces mixed with newcomers. The leadership team is setting forth various goals with a clear vision. Each with their respective ideas, they pledge to collectively work together to build on the previous SGA accomplishments to improve student life at UofL. Let’s meet the top 4.
Katie Hayden – Student Body President
Senior Katie Hayden is one of the familiar faces on this team. Last year, Hayden served as the executive vice president, running alongside former SGA president Dorian Brown. The McConnell Scholar will now operate as the president.
With experience under her belt, Hayden looks to combine her goals with her vice presidents’ goals.
“We are in a unique situation where two different slates seat the president and vice president of SGA,” she said. But being from different sides, Hayden believes, is a good opportunity to combine ideas and build together. “When you run in a SGA election you kind of realize that most candidates have similar ideas, just different ways of achieving them,” she said.
Improving communication with the student body is a vision of Hayden’s. She plans to implement a sign up where students can receive text updates on current SGA news.
“How can we best get everybody in the know? How can we help students understand who SGA is? When you look at it, the big picture, your student government does make a lot of decisions that can drastically affect the student body,” she said.
After graduating, Hayden plans to attend dental school at UofL with aspirations of becoming an orthodontist.
Angel Okorie – Executive Vice President
Senior Angel Okorie, is a newcomer to the leadership slate. Majoring in health and human performance, she is also part of the Zeta Phi Beta sorority on campus.
As the 2023–2024 term kicks off, Okorie’s main goal is to make diversity, equity and inclusion a priority for the Student Government Association. She aims to build close partnerships with the equity center and other departments on campus.
Okorie, who also is a Porter Scholar and an Honors Scholar, praises the people she has met while being at UofL.
“I’m pretty involved on campus and feel like I have found a good amount of people that I can fall back on,” she said.
As the school year kicks off, she is excited to advocate for other students and to make a difference while serving her time for SGA.
Alex Reynolds – Student Body Services Vice President
Senior Alex Reynolds is a political science major from Northern Kentucky. Reynolds is now in his second term in the vice president position.
One of Reynold’s main goals is continuing to improve on student services. Carrying from last year, are his plans to improve the Cardinal Cruiser transportation services.
“We’re making some real headway this summer,” he said. “I want to make it more like an Uber, Lyft-type service.” Reynolds has reached an agreement with the university to create an app for the service and he hopes it will be deployed by spring 2024.
Reynolds, who is an advocate for free speech, says it’s important for students to get involved with SGA.
“Not only does SGA provide these amazing opportunities for leadership and amazing connections, it also helps actually make a difference,” he said. “The university administration has done a really good job of including students within SGA and working with us to craft university policy and services.”
“Once I toured and met all the people, I knew this was the right fit,” he said. “They thought of me as more than just another number, they actually cared about the success and opportunities that I get here.”
Sawyer Depp – Student Body Academic Vice President
Senior Sawyer Depp is a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and is also a part of the McConnell Scholar program. He is majoring in political science and history.
Depp, who is a northern Kentucky native, chose to come to UofL because it felt like home to him.
“I met with several people and from my conversations, I felt like this was an environment where I thought I could learn and grow into the best person I could be,” he said.
Depp believes getting students involved in SGA is important for the small things as well as the big changes.
“Being able to see change on a university level or even at an individual level — just seeing change at all — is really what I think the biggest draw to SGA is,” he said.
Upon graduation, he has aspirations to attend law school with plans to one day perhaps become a judge.
