Sofía Rivera Soto doesn’t waste any time. The third-year Chemical Engineering major, who is also in her third straight year playing the trumpet in Colegio’s marching band, has recently added a new job to the mix: being one of the two Senators representing the Faculty of Engineering, a position she will hold until the end of the academic year. Having been both in Band and engaged in her courses before this new task, Sofía already had a pretty good idea of what it meant to be organized and juggle several responsibilities at the same time. Nevertheless, she explains that “the Senate is something completely different and new to me, but I’ve had people who were Senators who help me understand the proceedings.”
As a Senator, you belong to the Academic Senate. Sofía is one of the nine representatives of its 50-member body and, additionally, forms part of the Faculty and Student Council. Apart from these three bodies, as Senator she has to be part of at least one committee in the Senate, another one in the Faculty Council, and another one in the Student Council. All this you can add up to a hefty seven meetings per week, and as Sofía said, “my first ever Senate meeting wound up lasting two Tuesdays.”
Even though it’s a time consuming job, Sofía is very much in love with it all. Her fresh-faced nervousness as she stepped into that first meeting quickly evaporated as she realized that they were all there with the same purpose: to fulfill their jobs to ensure the best possible outcome for the University. This is what she maintains as her drive as Senator: to meeting new people all the time and to be the voice of her fellow students. In her past several first months as Senator, Sofía has also learned a lot about how the University is run and certain things that aren’t common knowledge to all colegiales, like how the Council itself functions.
One of the things Sofía aspires to change about the Council is “to make public and accessible all that we’re doing, because it truly is a lot of work and students don’t know that.” She continued explaining that if all students knew about this, it would help them greatly at the assemblies. Actually, her own lack of knowledge about the University’s administrative endeavors was what pushed her in the first place to the nomination. Ultimately, her goal as is to learn and be the voice of the students by being objective. “I want them to know that I’m reachable, just like all the other Senators.”
Sofía admits that her savior and helper is her day planner (“it’s extremely important to keep track of everything or else I could forget).” While it takes a lot of responsibility to be on top of everything, Sofía embraces the challenge: “when Tuesday arrives, I’m pumped and excited for the meetings since 5 AM.” While at the Senate she’s more mentally challenged, performing in the band poses are physical challenge for Sofía. She’s the band’s shortest member, so she has to make a slightly bigger effort to stay synchronized with the rest while they’re marching. “That doesn’t limit me; it makes my experience in the marching band more enriching because it gives meaning to my presence here,” she says with conviction.
There’s a big feeling of belonging and family both in band and in the Senate which grows by the day, and she hopes to be able to work together with the other Council and Senate members to bring positive changes to the campus. “There’s nothing that matches that feeling of connection and emotion, especially in the Justas where we are playing the Himno Colegial and everybody yells out at the end ‘Colegio!’ I want to bring this same emotion to the Senate so that we can help each other and learn that the Council is not its own entity; we’re part of the same University.”
To contact Sofía Rivera for any of your campus-related needs, you can find her in the CGE (Office in the Student Center) on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, or in the CEFI (Office of the Student Council of the Engineering Faculty) in S-417 on Wednesday afternoons. You can also reach her through her e-mail, sofia.rivera6@upr.edu.
All photographs by Fianeli Arvelo-Alvarado.