Summer 2025 Elections

Lachlan Van Egmond 

 Personal Description 

I am a technologist. In the future my net worth will be many billions. I would like to

meet smart driven individuals in college. Really the only point in college these days is

meeting people for a bunch of different purposes. Basically every great co-founder duo

began as a college friendship. Most people marry people they met in college. If we

don’t have the most innovative people forming companies in college we are missing

out on the joy of life. I want to have the maximum joy of life. I crossed seven oceans

searching for that joy. And I still haven't found what I am looking for. I think the future

will be good. I am working to cement that belief further. Please help me.

Platform Description 

I feel as if UVIC is in a malaise in many areas of development. I want our engineering

program to be world class. I want our university to be world class. I am looking to

implement Dubai level development at UVIC and UVIC Engineering in specific. I am

hoping to have Singapore level success at modernizing and expanding the program.

Everything I do follows from this goal and question: “How can we be number 1 in

everything?”

What is stopping us from transforming this land into an island paradise? If they can

have it in New York why can’t we have it here? What makes Dubai so special? How did

they turn a desert village into a metropolis?

To this end I want to run for VP student life. I think we need to imbue a sense of

innovation and entrepreneurship in UVIC engineering. I am not seeing enough fire for

success. I want to see startups and autonomous vehicles and ORBITAL rockets. I want

to see humanoid robots and defense tech. How can we supercharge the program to

make UVIC the destination for engineering? How can we increase the value of our

degrees? How can we compete for co-op jobs internationally with greater skill

development?

These questions keep me up at night. My girlfriend is jealous because I think about

UVIC Engineering 24/7. I think a VP student life needs to deal with low level stuff like

lockers and merch certainly. However, the real change comes from shifting UVIC

Engineering towards a high agency culture.

“you can just do things”

If it was up to me I would chop down the forests outside of Ring Road and put up

another expanded engineering campus with thousands of student housing dorm

rooms. If I get into this position I will make a lot of calls. I will get powerful influential

people to come to campus and take a look at our graduates and students. I will bring

billionaires to campus to sample our talent and expand our reach.

Point Form Summary of Platform Description 

•  Make lots of calls, get billionaire company owners to come speak to us and pick from our talent pool.

• Do boring duties such as lockers (which should be free btw)

•  The merch needs to be made more aesthetic. I have an eye for beauty.

• Replace the culture of complacency with a high agency culture. There is always room to go harder. We can always do more. Be smarter. Work harder. 99% of the beauty in life comes from struggling towards something great. Many people say that getting an engineering degree is the hardest thing they will do in their entire lives. I hope this is not true. I hope that 25 years from now I can call up my UVIC engineering buddies and ask them how it feels to sail a 200 meter yacht into Monaco. Engineering should be just the beginning like it was for Elon. Get a degree, get rich, change the world. In that order. Dream big, life is beautiful.