Lily PolenchukThe 2025 presidential race has been unusually packed, with four candidates vying for the University of Alberta Students’ Union’s (SU) top position. However, there have been two clear leaders in the race from the start.
Ofure Eigbe brought some interesting ideas, but failed to really match the other candidates. Joseph Sesek, however, focused on the wrong thing entirely and lacked real solutions for students. Fortunately, Pedro Almeida bought experience and vision for improving academics, though slightly less clear ideas to improve other aspects of student life. Sophie Martel, current president of the Indigenous Students’ Union (ISU), brought experience from the ISU, a clear vision for students, and an even stronger passion for serving students.
Pedro Almeida
Almeida is the candidate most familiar with the SU as the 2023–24 vice-president (academic) (VPA). He’s leaned on that experience a lot throughout his campaign, which wasn’t an entirely bad thing. It eventually got a little repetitive, but his experience is a big asset to bring to being president. However, that’s not the end all, be all of what a president needs.
Strong ideas and vision are far more important. And Almeida has offered some tangible ideas for how to effect change within the SU, the university, and with other levels of government. Things like expanding zero textbook cost (ZTC) courses and OneCard access are things he’s carrying forward from his VPA term.
“Better academics” is also a big part of his platform — in fact the only platform he has gone into any depth explaining. It’s not a bad thing to consider as president, but there is also a VPA who will be committed to tackling academic challenges. It would have been nice to hear about more things, like more about his plans to address broader student issues.
He has briefly mentioned using his experience to help his other executives tackle issues. Beyond that, he would encourage consistent communication between his executive team and student groups, associations, and faculties.
At other times, his platform points felt a little vague. He mentioned he would push for housing issues to be addressed, among other issues like food insecurity, transit safety, and provincial funding. But how exactly he would effectively advocate for these things or what specific solutions he would target were unclear at times.
He talked about the SU being a bridge between students and university administration to address student concerns. Almeida pointed to existing initiatives like tuition town halls or coffee hour chats with the Dean of Students (DoS) office. However, he failed to acknowledge that oftentimes university administration ends up ignoring what it hears from students. There’s been tuition town halls where students speak out against increases, yet the university goes ahead with the increases anyways. SU council has made clear it opposed the First Day Access Program, yet the university is still going ahead with it. Being a bridge isn’t enough if university administration doesn’t take what it hears to heart.
Almeida is a strong candidate, given his experience and tangible ideas to enact change for students. However, his could have spent more of his campaign talking about specific ideas rather than reminiscing about his term as VPA.
Ofure Eigbe
Eigbe was definitely an underdog coming into this race, as someone with no prior experience with the SU. She has had experience being a representative for other student associations, but this was definitely a big leap. Unfortunately, running against two more experienced candidates, Eigbe’s ideas didn’t quite break through for me.
For starters, there’s been times when it’s been clear to me Eigbe hasn’t necessarily done enough research. One such time was at the presidential debate where she repeatedly said the U of A is increasing enrolment by 20,000 students. The U of A is increasing enrolment by 16,000 students by 2033, not 20,000. At the Myer Horowitz forum, she also talked about asking the province to extend operating grants to international students. However, operating grants are blanket funding given to institutions — it has little to do with domestic versus international students.
Then again at the presidential debate, she mentioned advocating to candidates during the provincial election. But there is no provincial election planned until 2027. She did not mention the municipal or federal election that will actually happen this year.
While these may have been minor slip-ups, being president of the SU is no small job. The president is the spokesperson for the SU to students, media, and governments. Being able to cite accurate statistics and be knowledgeable about students’ issues is important. Unfortunately, she’s shown she doesn’t have a strong grasp on these things.
Though, to her credit, she has pointed to some important issues. One is the stress on the Campus Food Bank (CFB) as more students are using it. However, her plan to talk to faculties to find more funding doesn’t seem like the best idea to me. Faculties aren’t exactly rolling in money, so I don’t see going to them for funding getting us very far. She has also mentioned expanding CFB services to other campuses. While I think this is a good idea, given the stress CFB is already under, it would have been nice to hear how she plans to execute that expansion.
When it came to concerns around safety, Eigbe largely focused on residences and providing residents in on-campus housing with more information. But she largely left students living off-campus or being on campus more generally unmentioned.
Eigbe very clearly cares about students, but I found her ideas on how to address students’ concerns lacking at times. Perhaps next year, after a little more research and familiarity with the SU, Eigbe would be well-suited to run for a vice-president position.
Sophie Martel
Throughout the entire campaign, Martel showed she is knowledgeable about the issues students are facing across campuses and demographics. Better yet, she brought fresh and tangible ideas on how to address those issues.
A huge emphasis throughout her campaign was community building and campus solidarity. All of this is for the purpose of creating a stronger voice when advocating for students’ needs. This included student groups, campuses, associations, and beyond. Bringing these different groups who are advocating for different things on their own together as one voice to push for various changes could be a game changer. Not just for getting results from the university, but also from the provincial government when it comes to things like funding.
Additionally, Martel mentioned looking for more external partners outside of governments for support, whether that’s for CFB or other initiatives. This isn’t exactly a typical approach to funding issues, but as the provincial government shows a reluctance to put more funding towards students’ needs, this might just be what we need. She’s had success with this as the president of the ISU, which can translate well into trying to bring this to the SU.
Martel has also touched on various issues like food security, housing, childcare, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and safety. Seeking external support is a part of the solution for these various issues. But beyond that, she proved over and over again that she has done the work to consult with students. She has also emphasized her desire to find both short-term and more long-term solutions to these issues.
Joseph Sesek
If I had to sum up Sesek’s campaign, I’d say it was a lot of big claims about other candidates with few ideas to actually help students. His main focus throughout the entire campaign period has been on cutting his salary and lowering SU fees. His secondary focus seemed to be taking shots at other candidates — even ones from other races. And anytime someone asked him a question unrelated to salaries and SU fees, he struggled to answer.
I cannot stress enough how much Sesek rode the salary cut thing throughout this campaign. At various times, he claimed that the salary and fee increases make it harder for the SU to advocate against tuition increases. However, I highly doubt the reason the U of A keeps raising tuition is because it thinks the SU executives are paid too much.
But even more shocking was when Sesek doubled down after both Almeida and Martel raised important points about the salaries. Martel pointed out that Indigenous students, like herself, may lose funding from their band if they take on an executive position. Sesek completely blew past these things, despite saying he wants more Indigenous representation in the SU. He simply stuck with his position that candidates who didn’t promise to cut their salaries didn’t care about students as much as he did.
And the head scratching continued. When talking about why he decided to run, Sesek said it was because he found out RATT used to be open seven days a week. Personally, I and most other students have much larger issues than RATT not being open. Say, rising tuition, paying rent, buying groceries, finding a job.
Candidates were also asked about the relationship they would have with university administration. In response, Sesek asked if he needed to have a relationship with them at all. Instead of building relationships, he seemed to want to fight with them, as he has been doing with candidates throughout his campaign. It is possible to have an amicable relationship with university administration while still fighting for students.
His lack of knowledge about students’ issues and the university generally was very concerning. At times, he didn’t know of different associations on campus. Other times, he struggled to or outright refused to answer questions about various things.
Altogether, Sesek’s lack of knowledge about students’ issues is highly concerning. Furthermore, he seems to be looking for a fight more than he’s looking for solutions. And the few solutions he does offer make little to no sense or would have a minimal impact at best.
Who will win?
I think this is ultimately a race between Almeida and Martel. Both are fairly well-known names around campus, if you’ve been keeping up with anything SU related. However, I think Pedro’s connections to both the SU itself and the science faculty may win him the vote.
Who should win?
While Almedia has had some good ideas and has experience to back him up, it’s Martel’s passion and care for students that has won me over. I trust that as president, Martel would ignore no student and would push for real solutions. In my eyes, Martel is the better candidate for the role.
