You may not know him personally, but you certainly know his name. Whether you know him as a double major in political science and history, a pride guide, a research assistant, a peer teacher, the proud living historian of 18th Vice President of the United States, Henry Wilson, or – of course – Student Government Association (SGA) President, chances are you either know Lincoln Anniballi, have seen him in passing or have heard the name.

Now in the final semester of his senior year at Hofstra, Anniballi has cemented himself as a mainstay of the Hofstra community through the dozens of initiatives, extracurriculars and jobs he takes on. However, his most influential role has been his time in SGA, specifically during his two terms as president.
One of Anniballi’s main goals when coming to Hofstra was to make an impact, and he has worked hard to do so since his first semester in Fall 2021 when he ran for and won a seat as a senator.

“I lost every election in high school for student council … [but SGA] was just a natural thing for me to get involved in,” Anniballi said. “The cool thing about student government here is that it’s not very political in the sense that you’re not playing fake senate every week; you’re actually doing things on campus that make a difference.”
But Anniballi’s involvement with SGA did not end there. In Spring 2022, he ran for and won a position as appropriations chair – the position in charge of the Appropriations Committee which divides out funds to clubs – with the intention of changing the committee for the better.

“I ran wanting to modernize the committee and make it so that it was more club-friendly,” Anniballi said. “There was this culture of saying ‘no’ to clubs, and I just wanted to change that.”

In Spring 2023, one year after being appointed as appropriations chair, Anniballi launched his first campaign for president.

“From the start, I knew that I wanted to run for president,” Anniballi said. “From my first year, I knew it was something I really wanted to try to do.”

Despite his outset aspirations, Anniballi did not actually plan to run his junior year. However, internal calls for a leader in SGA prompted him to step up.

“I think that everyone was looking for a leader because there was no strong leader in SGA, and it was causing a lot of problems … people in SGA were asking me to step up and run because no one else was willing to do it,” Anniballi said.

After a hard-fought campaign, Anniballi won his first bid as president and got right to work. He and his team expanded the club budget without raising tuition, negotiated for residential students to get swipe access into all dorms, extended the Hofstra Fitness Center’s hours, added ice machines to residence halls, expanded access to menstrual products across campus and proposed the renovations to Hofstra USA (HofUSA) that were completed in Summer 2024.

Towards the end of his first term, Anniballi faced an important choice: whether he should run for a second time. For a while, he was leaning towards not running.

“I thought for most of my time as president in 2023 to 2024 that I wasn’t going to go for a second term. I thought that – I actually made a list – ‘if I can check off all of these things that

I’m running for and want to do, I won’t run again because there’s no reason to’ … [and] we checked off pretty much everything I ran on in one way or another.”

But, of course, Anniballi ultimately decided to run for a second term. A major reason for this decision came up in Anniballi’s second campaign: continuity. Because of the momentum he had built through his relationships with bodies like administration, campus dining and campus recreation, Anniballi saw an opportunity to bring about even more positive change and, as was his slogan in Spring 2024, make “Hofstra for you.”

Anniballi won his second bid for president, making him Hofstra’s first consecutive two-year president in SGA’s 88-year history. In his second term, Anniballi and his team worked, and continue to work, to expand the initiatives they started and begin new ones, such as broadening the campus free speech policy, finishing the HofUSA renovations, further supporting clubs and organizations, bringing soft serve ice cream to campus and adding art to the Sondra and David S. Mack Student Center, among many other things.

A major question emerges when looking at Anniballi’s history: why? Why dedicate dozens of hours each week to meetings, paperwork, bureaucracy and difficult people when you could focus on your classes, an internship or literally anything else? Especially since Anniballi has spent his whole college career in an important student leadership position, he is often under intense scrutiny from administration and his fellow students. Handling this pressure takes a lot of skill, self-awareness and mental fortitude.

“[I had] to learn what to view as legitimate and what not to view as legitimate,” Anniballi said. “I think that if I’m bothered by something that I see, that somebody says, it’s probably because there’s an aspect of it that’s true, so I want to try to correct that if it’s something bad.”

But for Anniballi, there are two answers to the reason he stays devoted.

The first is Anniballi’s passion for public service. After graduating, he plans on going to school for a master’s degree in public administration to work in local government or the nonprofit sector. This throughline of public service has been in Anniballi’s life since childhood.

“One of my earliest memories is watching the inauguration of [President Barack] Obama in 2009 in my kindergarten classroom … even then I had [to have had] some sort of interest for it to have stood out to me so much,” Anniballi said.

And as Anniballi got older, he became more involved. From staying up long past his bedtime in 2012, awaiting election results for the gubernatorial race in Massachusetts to phone banking in 2016 to serving as vice chair for Natick’s Town Seal Review Committee from 2020-2023, Anniballi has a consistent record for being civically engaged and caring deeply about politics and making positive change. So, it is a no-brainer that he would take that passion to Hofstra.

The second answer to why he remains so devoted is Anniballi’s love for Hofstra and for making it a better place.

“We only get four years here to make an impact,” Anniballi said. “And four years from now, everyone will be different, and a lot of work my team and I accomplished might be gone, but I’m proud that we made the lives of the students here today a little better. All we can do is take care of those around us now, and I’ve worked hard to advocate and provide for my peers and Hofstra. This place means a lot to me, and I hope I’ve left it a little better than when I found it, but either way, I’m just happy I had the opportunity, and I’ve made so many memories along the way. I’ll miss working on a lot of the projects we started, but I can only hope they’ll continue into the future and that they’ve made a difference for some people.”

Anniballi has certainly left his mark on Hofstra. Whether it be through his efforts to protect students’ rights, improve living on campus or bring the campus community closer together, Anniballi’s impact on Hofstra will not be forgotten.

Editors note: Lincoln Anniballi has been a contributor to The Hofstra Chronicle.