The candidates for the RHA Executive Board have been announced! Candidates will be campaigning for their position of interest in the following weeks. Elections will be happening for the President, Director of Internal Affairs, and Director of Finance on February 6th, and elections for the Director of Member Engagement, Director of Programming, and Director of External Relations will be happening on February 13th. The list of candidates is below.

Robert Emmett Miskell III

It would be an honor and a pleasure to serve the diverse and charismatic residents of the Georgia Tech community. I’m not running because I feel obligated to fill this position and I’m not running because I’m under the illusion that it will be fun. Honestly. With so many inquiring voices into my future with RHA, I struggled with whether to run and wrestled with the direction that RHA was headed towards. But after speaking with residents, campus leaders, and of course, hall council officers, about issues that they face in their communities. I’m running for this position because I’ve seen the impact that RHA can have on Georgia Tech’s community and I am fully committed to continuing our RHA’s overarching objective: Turning halls into homes. RHA is currently approaching a crossroads between being a professional organization and maintaining its status on campus as a mostly fun-oriented organization. As with most situations, I fully believe that there is a happy medium among the two seemingly variant paths. While there’s no simple way to convey such an abstract concept over the interwebs in just a few characters, the best explanation I can make is that RHA’s future involves including both of aspects of our current deviant paths. My high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Coulter, made it abundantly clear five days each week that “you should never half-ass anything worth your time.” While probably not the way I’d describe this today, Mr. Coulter was right: why waste your limited time in whatever capacity you may be serving in if you’re not willing to give it your all? In this same mindset, long-term planning is a difficult task to take on as it likely won’t affect your immediate future on campus and you’re impact may not likely be felt for a decade down the road; however, I see long-term futuristic planning a way to ensure the community your serving in remains a place you’d be willing to claim as a part of your life story. Over the next few years, there are plans in motion to make a lot of changes to the physical structure of campus and on a campus-wide policy level and I want to make it my mission to keep the Residence Hall Association relevant on campus, in touch with our community, and heavily-involved in the areas we strive to succeed in. When I started working as a Communications Chair for my first-year residence hall, Hefner-Armstrong, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. With these words in mind, it is my deepest aspiration that you allow me the chance to demonstrate to the Georgia Tech community the leadership and determination that I’ve garnered in my time here at the one and only home of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

Taylor Dingler

RHA has been a big part of my life since first becoming a meetings chair in HHC Hall Council. Since then, I have now worked in the IT Coordinator position since Summer 2018. Witnessing the inner workings of RHA and learning more about the processes and procedures that RHA has made me come up with a variety of ideas to not only make the turnover better but the overall the transparency. Additionally, working and designating specific tasks to each director including the President would allow for RHA to grow faster and become more adaptable to the changing technological environment. I would love to bring RHA’s presence closer to Tech by doing things such as promoting the website and social media more alongside creating an RHA reddit account to push larger events to a large group of students quickly. To some extent, the RHA Executive Board feels unapproachable and distant. As President, I would work to bring that gap closer by providing a more relaxed and friendly office space and being available to hall council officers, advisors, and executive members. Additionally, working toward creating a community within the executive branch would encourage bigger RHA collaborations and allow for a friendly workspace to be achieved. I love to work with others, and I hold a positive mental attitude when approaching issues. I hope to bring this attitude to the rest of RHA and to encourage development in making processes and procedures faster with software development and task delegation.

William Eugene Carty Jr.

If re-elected to another term, I will continue serving RHA and the campus community with my ever-improving leadership skills and experience. After three semesters in the RHA Executive Branch, I will bring valuable knowledge and experience to my position and the organization as a whole. I have the necessary skills and experience required to implement my major initiatives, Resident Empowerment and Reimbursement Revamp. While other candidates can certainly push these, there will be lost time as they learn the position and build the necessary relationships. I, however, would be able to continue these long-term projects efficiently and effectively. Aside from my experience, I will come into my next term with a refreshed purpose. Shifting from my largely IT focused goals this year, my overall vision for next term takes a stronger focus on improving how we serve and advocate for residents. Reimbursement Revamp is aimed at service, streamlining the reimbursement process makes it easier to fund events and improvements. This will encourage community building, one of RHAs biggest interests. Resident Empowerment is more aimed at advocacy, but also assists in better serving residents. This requires giving residents easier ways to voice their thoughts, using avenues like Hall Council and our semesterly surveys. This alone is not enough, however. Empowerment requires awareness of the available resources, coordination with other positions to launch new marketing campaigns. Of course, all the feedback we collect has to then be properly acted upon, something that has not been done well in past years. I have already greatly improved how we handle feedback, but more needs to be done to enforce accountability and demonstrate action to residents.

Sara Bowles

RHA cannot run without a strong financial basis. We use resident’s money to improve their on-campus experience through things like fun events held throughout campus or permanent improvement projects. The Director of Finance needs to have a firm grasp on finances, given the huge amounts of money they are in charge of. I believe I am an ideal candidate for Director of Finance. Since becoming a finance coordinator for my hall council, I have become invested in seeing RHA flourish. I enjoy seeing residents enjoy various RHA events, and I wish to become part of the executive board that allows RHA to function. During my time as finance coordinator, I have become adept at handling my council’s finances and the paperwork associated with them. I have never had a bad EAF, and I always turn in my paperwork on time or early. I regularly attend Legislative Council and Financial Oversight Commission. This has given me more insight to how the finances function in RHA. The Director of Finance does not only need to know about finances. A member of the Executive Board needs to have quality communication skills in order to address residents and members of RHA. I have talked to residents about their bills to help them correct their forms. There was an incident with how my council’s intramurals were submitted last semester. I talked with my hall director and the current Director of External Relations, Jordan, to fix the situation and get the resident their money back. I believe that my experiences with RHA make me an exceptional candidate of Director of Finance.

Cayla Jones

I intend to apply for Director of Member Engagement of the Residence Hall Association of Georgia Tech for the 2019-2020 school year. My motivation of pursuing this role is to be able to serve my community through encouraging active memberships and the pursuit of leadership roles throughout the residence halls but also within the Georgia Tech campus community as a whole. If elected as Director of Member Engagement, besides responding to constituent concerns I have several goals I wish to meet in the coming year. Foremost among them is ensuring that more residents are aware of and participate in the Leadership Track. I believe this will encourage people to reach outside their comfort zones when they are being more involved directly with RHA without having to be Officers and I think that can only help strengthen our community. I will also work to continue being a listener of the members of my community and affirming that they do have a voice in RHA. My greatest asset as a candidate will be my experience as a hall council officer- specifically Communications Chair- and my knowledge of how the school works. Having been involved in RHA before will make leading it on Executive Board much easier for a seamless transition from this year to next. I feel that the RHA's job is to do as much as possible to help any and all residents work to achieve their goals. To this end I am going to have several large meetings of students leaders and interested individuals at the start of the year for anyone to bring concerns forward. I hope to make student life convenient and fun.

Sammy Otoo

If chosen to serve as RHA’s next Director of Member Engagement, I’d constantly strive to execute the Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations of this position in the most inclusive way possible. For years, inclusivity has been a large part of RHA’s platform. As the second largest student organization on campus, and the only student organization that specifically caters to on-campus residents, it is essential that RHA caters to the wants, needs, and representation of as many Georgia Tech residents as we can. We’ve done a fantastic job of this so far, but there is still a lot of work to be done. RHA’s campus presence and reputation still isn’t as extensive as we want it to be, and we are often still perceived as some unapproachable entity. Through emphasizing the Leadership Track, and increasing efforts to diversify advertisements, I hope to bring RHA new publicity. Any and every oncampus resident should be familiar with who we are, seeing as they’re paid members of our Association. The two main events DME is tasked with running, Music and Mocktails and GT Unite, are both crucial pieces of programming. Music and Mocktails essentially opens the year for RHA and can serve as wonderful publicity for the Association. GT Unite, our yearly celebration of the various cultures present within our student body, has wonderful potential to be the most inviting and inclusive event RHA has to offer. As DME, I’d plan on programming these events to be successful on each of these fronts. Furthermore, I’d like to continue to engage those of us who choose to actively participate in RHA. As DME, I would be tasked with planning and executing our semesterly retreats (HCOFTR and HCOSTR), maintaining the Leadership Track, and ensuring we meet our semesterly goals for social outings and innings. I believe my experience as a Programs Chair on the 2017-18 Towers-Hanson Hall Council will aid me here and allow me to achieve these responsibilities of the DME in new, comprehensive and imaginative ways.

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Jordan Baxter

Allow me to help you explain the importance of the Director of External Relations, and spell out why I am the perfect candidate for the DER position. DER is an extremely important position, even though it is at the bottom of the gavel order. I have worked extremely hard this year to clean up the mess I was given, and make the most out of the position. Right now, I was able to focus on creating a presence at conferences by through bidding and attempting to promote conferences. Even though some conferences did not have full attendance, I did not let that stop me from trying to make the experience the best it could be for the other delegates. Conferences were not the only thing I did. The Housing Intramurals Competition saw its creation under my rein as DER, and I look to continue that next year as well. Optionally, I elected to do table at FASET this past Summer and work on recruiting first-years and transfer students into the organization. Rebuilding was the theme for this year’s theme for DER, but now I want to make next year have a theme of creation. Okay, enough of what was done this year. Future plans for the DER include: Extending the RHA involvement with RHASP. Xylem may be a topic I enjoy talking about, but talking about RHASP is something that I want to introduce this year. Taking the time to present to RHASP organizations will allow me to keep tabs on organization more closely, as well as keeping in touch to answer any possible questions. Essentially, organizations will have stricter watch, but the same guidelines as last year. RHASP will have a different vibe to it, but this change is good. Now RHASP is not the only thing needing reform. A lot of organizations should interact with us, but do not. Let’s see what I will do: Relations between RHA and outside organizations have not always been the best, and that’s something I want to improve that too. Especially the relationship with SGA, since that has really tapered off with each new DER. Lately, SSM relations have improved significantly, and I want to keep that up. A lot of SSMs do not see the value of RHA and I want to make it my goal next year to present more with them, so they can learn the benefits of RHA. To do this, I plan on holding more town hall meetings next year. I think that this will encourage more SSMs to interact with RHA. Outreaching to SSMs through the SSRs will also allow better communication between the two entities. Now why are SSMs important? SSMs are very important in RHA because they help encourage residents to show up to the meetings, and nothing can get done without them. I said I would spell this out for you. If you look at the first letter of each sentence, it will read “Director of External Relations”. Must I say more?