Robert Krampen and Abe Hoffman were elected into office as the 2026/27 Student Government President and Vice President on Feb.26, at The Boardwalk at North Lake Village. With the campaign over, the president and vice-president-elect discussed their plans ahead of their first day in office on April 1.

“Honestly, I couldn’t believe it. I was so tired, so beaten up from being out in the sun all day, so sunburned from, you know, talking to hundreds of people asking them for their vote,” Krampen said. “Abe and I, we didn’t process it the first day when they announced it. It took a few days for us to finally realize, ‘whoa, we won,’ after days and weeks of hard work, we finally did it.”

Student Government (SG) President-Elect Krampen, a sophomore majoring in political science, and SG Vice President-Elect Hoffman, a freshman majoring in biology, won the election with 505 of the total 844 votes. Both come into office with prior experience in Student Government.

Krampen spent the past year as the chief of staff to the current SG President, Gianna Ihuoma, and Vice President, Giovanna DeMarco. Hoffman was hired by SG this semester as Director of Student Opportunity.

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The duo decided to run for office after seeing former student government campaigns make unkept promises once elected. Before campaigning, they made a point of keeping their word.

“Some people just promise the students the world. As somebody in Student Government, I know that they’re not going to be able to achieve like 80% of what they’re saying,” Krampen said. “I didn’t want to be a candidate like that. Abe didn’t want to be a candidate like that. We wanted to run on actionable stuff. We didn’t want to lie to people and promise them the world and not be able to achieve any of it.”

Krampen and Hoffman based their campaign on three pillars: communication, commuters and communication. They tied several initiatives connected to these pillars that they will take into office, with Krampen and Hoffman each starting with one major plan.

Krampen has stated during the campaign that he wants to represent students and their needs. His Lyft and Red Coach bus programs look to enhance the student experience.

“The points of our pillars that we ran on are very specific, and they’re actionable,” Krampen said. “We’re going to get a Lyft discount program for students so they can get $5 off, or we’re going to bring back a red coach bus stop to FGCU…we’re going to make the commuter experience better.”

While the Lyft program, already with a written-up contract, is pending approval from the Board of Trustees, the Red Coach bus program is a former initiative Krampen looks to bring back. It was a program partnered with the private transport company Red Coach that transported students to different cities around Florida at a discounted fare.

As for Hoffman, he has been developing a plan with Fort Myers Mayor Kevin B. Andersen for an internship program that provides students with a way to gain experience in politics and law. Now that Hoffman and Krampen are elected, they have organized a meeting with Andersen to discuss further details.

“[The] Fort Myers mayor is really pro-FGCU. He’s an FGCU alum. So he’s really happy to work with us,” Hoffman said.  “When I brought up how it could be a launching point to get people into politics and law, [students] seemed really excited about it…even if they weren’t political science majors, the current landscape of politics [has] a lot of people [who] want to get involved.”

However, Krampen voiced that the most challenging aspect of pushing the aforementioned initiatives through is the lack of motivation among campus departments to work with Student Government.

“Every year, departments or different programs or different people come knocking on Student Government’s door and they want our money because they think that we’re a piggy bank,” Krampen said. “Under me, I’m going to try and things are going to be different. We’re not going to be a piggy bank for the university administration, unless it’s something that students can get something out of.”

Krampen and Hoffman’s campaign motto has been, “For the students. For FGCU.” They plan to continue to hear students’ input by going to them. If students need to get in touch with them, they recommend sending an email to [email protected] and [email protected].

“We’re changing the strategy for how we’re getting student input,” Krampen said.“Townhalls are not as effective as people think…we’re going to go into the fraternities and sororities, RSOs, keep going into SLS classrooms and directly get student input from them.”