Tanya Torres fondly recalls her childhood days growing up in Houston, Texas. “From the moment I was born, my dad was giving me speeches,” she says, explaining that they were about the value of going to school and that she took that advice to heart.
Today, the 21-year-old political science major at Nashville’s Fisk University is reaching another milestone. As the 2017-18 school year starts, she debuts as president of Fisk’s Student Government Association (SGA), making her the first Hispanic to serve as the elected student leader of the 151-year-old historically Black university.
She is appreciative of the chance to lead. “I’m not opposed to working hard,” says Torres. She describes being student government leader as carrying “a torch of excellence.”
Indeed, earning a chance to lead the Fisk SGA is a welcome challenge, Torres says, noting the university’s history of social activism. As for being the first Hispanic student to become the student leader at Fisk, she doesn’t see it as an issue.
“It is okay to be comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Torres says, adding she keeps an “open mind to differences. I’ve learned so many things about my peers and [their] experiences.”
Indeed, coming to Fisk was a tough choice, but the university family made it less complicated as the application and recruitment process began, she says.
Fisk was among several institutions — Howard University, the University of Houston, Texas Southern University and the University of Texas at Austin — that were hoping to lure Torres from Houston’s J. Frank Dobie High School, where she was in the top 10 percent of her class of some 800 students and was a member of the high school debate team.
