When she begins her term of office, President-elect Ingrid De La Torre said she will focus on fixing internal Student Government Association problems first.
“We have to fix some of the problems within the organization so that we can better serve the student body,” De La Torre said.
With 611 of 993 votes in the SGA Elections held Feb. 25-March 1, Mission Possible was elected as the executive ticket for the 2019-2020 academic year.
De La Torre said she was overwhelmed with joy from all the support she received after announcing her candidacy. She said Mission Possible traveled between the Brownsville and Edinburg campuses to talk to as many students as possible.
“We were very, very excited, and I feel we weren’t able to rest until Tuesday, when we got the confirmation that we won,” De La Torres said.
Serving with De La Torre will be Roy Cantu, vice president on the Brownsville campus, and Alexandra Smith-Macias, vice president for the Edinburg campus.
De La Torre, Cantu and Smith-Macias ran against the Action Taker ticket, composed of Carlo Flores, Victoria Lozano and Alex Saldivar, whose executive ticket received 382 votes.
Their term of office will begin May 6.
De La Torre said she would like to shorten SGA’s first-year intern program so it is only a semester and students can serve during their second semester.
“We would also like to restructure SGA elections, just so that there’s more student involvement. … However, there was a lot of things laid out by former President Denisce Palacios last year,” she said. “So, one of my goals this year is to finish everything that we started last year because I was also on her executive ticket.”
De La Torre said she wants to work on campus pride by uniting Brownsville and Edinburg.
“Not only is it specifically athletics and student involvement, but it’s getting that sense, ‘After I leave UTRGV I’m going to be proud I’m a Vaquero or Vaquera. I’m going to be proud to say where I graduated from,’” she said.
De La Torre would like students to see an increase in the SGA’s involvement on campus.
She plans to address SGA’s low membership by having more student involvement and outreach.
De La Torre would like to add more to SGA’s Facebook page, working as a team and attending campus events.
“Mission Possible is very ready to serve the student body,” she said.
Also elected are the following:
–Yaw Sam, senator for the Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship;
–Marco Charles and Genta Kaieda, senators for the College of Engineering and Computer Science;
–Andrew Delgadillo, Alyssa Guajardo and Diana Saldana, senators for the College of Health Professions;
–Carmen Galvan, Montserrat Prado and Franklin White, senators for the College of Liberal Arts;
–and Oscar Cazares and Jorge Contreras, senators for the College of Sciences.
