Collegiate Times

Current SGA President Emily Mashack, Vice President Rianka Urbina and Secretary Kirsten Kube discussed their current positions and what they hope new officers will bring to SGA next year.

When asked what each officer would take away from the experience they had serving on the SGA executive board this year, all three responded with very different answers.

"My takeaway would be working with the different people on the executive board," Urbina said. "The directors have so many different ideas that you would never think of by yourself. Working with so many different people has really opened my eyes and helped me grow as a leader."

Mashack is very thankful to have learned about her strengths and weaknesses while in office.

"I am one to jump into situations; I am very spontaneous," Mashack said. "You learn very quickly that you cannot be that way. You have to be more meticulous, methodical and thoughtful about the impact that you make."

Mashack added that she has learned a lot in office through working with Urbina and Kube.

"We have been able to achieve so much because of our differences," Mashack said. "The challenges that we have had to work through before we truly became a group of leaders has made us stronger and really enabled us to become proactive and achieve so much this year."

Kube said she has grown in her leadership roles throughout the past year.

"It has been an absolutely incredible experience," Kube said. "I have learned so much working with Rianka and Emily. You can really pull a team together to create such positive effects on the community, and I think if the students really want to make a difference and the officers really want to make a difference than they can. I think that is really inspiring."

Mashack said she hopes the upcoming SGA officers work more with the legislature next year.

"We have some great programs to work on next year," Mashack said. "SGA has some great connections to really be able to make a genuine difference."

Urbina said the initiatives that SGA set out to accomplish this year were completed.

"We were not elected as a ticket, we came in on a fresh slate," Urbina said. "Emily and I combined our three passions: sustainability, diversity and academic advising. Academic advising was a passion of all of ours, and I took the lead on that. I met with the House and Senate and asked if they wanted to start an undergraduate advising committee, and asked how they wanted to improve upon the program."

Another initiative was the creation of the first "Green Effect" game this year.

"It was a really awesome opportunity to have the first Green Effect football game this year," Mashack said. "We started by working with the Environmental Coalition, who has been one of our key partners this year. It was an idea to hand out biodegradable trash bags to the tailgaters in several lots to collect all of their recyclables to see how much is actually being thrown away. We did not actually get the chance to weigh the bags to see how much is thrown away because Hokies are such great fans that they took the recycling bags to the bins for us."

Mashack envisions having the program in all of the tailgating lots of every football game next year.

"We hope to have it turn into a sort of competition between the ACC schools since everyone has such a passion for football," Mashack said. "We hope to instill this program in other schools after they see how successful this event was and will be at Virginia Tech."

Kube said she worked to revamp the SGA's Web site this year, adding a new dimension to the organization.

"I worked a lot with the director of technology to oversee the Web site and membership development, which I feel is something that will benefit SGA in years to come," Kube said.

The current officers said they see a lot of potential for SGA to grow next year because of the qualified candidates running for election.

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