Meet the SBA Candidates

President statements:

Marissa Varnado:

I am running for SBA President because I believe that my experience as a student leader over the past two years has prepared me to serve the Law School student body. I am running on a platform of community, advocacy, service, and engagement. I believe that SBA’s role is to serve as a nexus between Law School administration, the Law School student body, and student organizations. There is so much SBA can accomplish in a given year, but the priorities should be those of the student body. I have spent the past two years serving on boards of BLSA, ACS, and Lambda and have served as an SBA Senator both years as well. Those experiences have afforded me invaluable institutional knowledge, connections with administrators such as the Student Affairs team, as well as strong relationships with my peers which have helped me to understand what is important to them. Fostering community, advocating for desired change, dutifully serving the student body, and engaging all students and student organizations so that they understand what SBA can do for them is my objective. I believe I am well suited to actualize these goals through SBA events old and new, student organization support, liaising with faculty and Law School administration, and listening to the ways my peers want SBA to serve them.

My platform, C.A.S.E., highlights four values that are core to my understanding of the role of SBA. 

Community is something we do outstandingly well here at UVA Law, but I believe SBA can play an even more central role in fostering community. In addition to maintaining the robust co-sponsorship offerings to student organizations, I would organize additional SBA socials to facilitate community building over snacks, drinks, and lawn games. I would also create opportunities for student leaders to grow through leadership development opportunities and bi-annual leadership summits.
Advocacy is core to SBA’s role, and as SBA President I would raise the real and ongoing concerns of the student body to the administration and work toward lasting change.

Service is at the heart of my motivation to lead and aid the leadership of several student organizations such as Lambda, BLSA, and ACS, as well as my position as a Peer Advisor and 2L Senator for SBA. My goal of serving as President of SBA is an extension of the commitment I have demonstrated to the UVA Law community over the past two years.

Engagement between SBA and the administration, student organizations, as well as engagement within the student body among and between class years is a primary aim of mine. Creating more opportunities to engage through SBA office hours, feedback surveys and socials will actualize our goal of an engaged student body that feels connected to the work of SBA.

I’m excited for the opportunity to campaign and to make my C.A.S.E. for serving as the next SBA President.

Mark Graff:

SBA has been my top priority since the start of 1L. As FYC Vice-President, 1L Senator, and now SBA Treasurer, I’ve spearheaded new initiatives, balanced SBA’s budget, and helped lead the Programming and Barristers’ committees, leveraging my connections as a longtime restaurant manager in Charlottesville to improve SBA socials. Still, I know that we can do so much more.

Case in point: my year as the incoming SBA treasurer began with the discovery of a bounced check from last year’s Barristers’ Ball, one that unknowingly left SBA with a near-$10,000 deficit. The moment I learned this, I conducted a full audit of all available SBA financial records, ensuring accountability in our spending. Through strategic spending and targeted planning, SBA ended the fall semester with a budgetary surplus and remains in a strong financial position today.

This experience highlights a larger issue within SBA: while the organization has made meaningful contributions to the Law School, we can—and must—have bolder vision and proactive planning in every aspect of governance.

Will, Rachel, and I believe that SBA should be visible in every student’s law school experience. Far too many students don’t know what SBA does or how it can serve them. We want to make SBA work for you.

Our campaign is committed to pushing for tangible improvements at the Law School. SBA should serve you with advocacy, starting with long-standing issues that need addressing. As the ABA recommends, students should receive academic credit or payment for journal work. Cafeteria offerings and working conditions must be fixed. Students should not have to fight for study space in the library, and UVA undergrads should have limited access to library facilities during peak hours. Student speech rights should be protected, and SBA should serve as a platform to amplify all students’ voices. We will push for lower parking costs and clearer communication for parking enforcement.

SBA must not only serve students but also foster a stronger connection between UVA Law and the broader Charlottesville community. We will expand SBA-led community service and fundraising initiatives, connecting students to the city and people beyond the Law School. This year, I helped launch the SBA Santa Hat fundraiser, repurposing unused UVA Law Santa hats to raise nearly $1,500 for gift cards for Law School support staff. This type of initiative should be the norm, not the exception. We will establish longstanding partnerships with local organizations to hold meaningful fundraising events that both support important causes and get students more involved in our community. We will continue our co-sponsorship work with student organizations, making SBA an active collaborator in events that reflect the diversity of student interests. We must expand mental health resources year-round, making student wellbeing an SBA priority beyond Mental Health Week. Finally, SBA must serve you by actively fostering UVA Law’s famously fun atmosphere. Every SBA event should be shaped by student feedback, ensuring we’re putting on programming that you want. We want to bring back the “Kegs in Spies” tradition and introduce new marquee social events that define the UVA Law experience. However, we must also prioritize our sober community, ensuring that sober-friendly events are just as prioritized as traditional socials.

All of these actions are supported by sound financial planning and the experience of knowing what works in SBA and what doesn’t. I commit to shifting the focus back to you–ensuring SBA is proactive, responsive, and working tirelessly to represent the UVA Law student body.

Our campaign isn’t about us—it’s about you. Let us serve you.

Vice President Statements:

James Torbert:

I am running for Vice President of the SBA to promote and advance the values within the “making the C.A.S.E.” platform–Community, Advocacy, Service, and Engagement.

The UVA law community is special, and as VP, I hope to bolster not only the UVA law community but our connections with UVA and Charlottesville as a whole. If elected, I hope to work with other members of the SBA to put on more Law School-wide events that bring together the entire community.

As VP, my goals for advocacy would be centered around effective listening and taking action based on the wishes of our student body. Along with being in a number of student organizations, one of my favorite extracurriculars at UVA is serving as a Support Officer for UVA’s Honor System. In this role, I represent students from across the University when accused of Honor offenses. I spend hours meeting with students and helping understand their stories before advocating on their behalf. If elected VP, I will advocate for all members of the UVA Law student body.

The role of the SBA is entirely rooted in service to the student body. If elected, I promise to always keep a service-oriented mindset, recognizing that being on the SBA creates a duty to serve the best interests of the entire student body. I also hope to increase the number of service-oriented events the SBA hosts, both to bring together UVA Law but also to serve and support the broader Charlottesville community.

As VP, I want to engage the entire student body. I will work with other members of the SBA to hold regular meetings with student organizations and SBA senators to make sure all campus issues are brought to the SBA’s and ultimately the administration’s attention.

I have the experience necessary to serve the student body as SBA VP. In undergrad, I served as the President of the Student Body at Washington and Lee University for two terms. In that role, I met with administrators, faculty, and staff to address and resolve university issues. I oversaw all recognized student organizations and allocated a budget of roughly $700,000 to those organizations. I hope to bring this experience to the table as your next SBA Vice President!

Will Chambers:

Law school, no matter how tedious it may seem at times, is a short period of our lives. 1Ls, in a flash you’ll be where us 2Ls are, staring down the back half of your time in Charlottesville, and 3Ls, just how long ago was it that you were sitting in Caplin, listening to endless orientation sessions? Yes, we manage to cram a whole lot of fun (and learning, presumably) into these three years, but it whizzes by nonetheless.

The rub of this is that it’s easy to get caught up in the shuffle, to only look ahead and not behind, or even better, to look around. It’s easy to say “this is how things have always been done” and to accept what’s already here. I don’t want that for us. I want us to be the unconventional, smart, motivated people that were accepted here and thrived here.

SBA has the potential to uplift all of us in our unique ways, drawing ideas from the student body and putting them into effect at organizational, administrative, and institutional levels. I recognized that potential immediately—that’s precisely why I knew it was possible to fight for 1L representation on the SBA Executive Board last year, now permanently codified as part of SBA’s structure. But I also know that institutional inertia comes for us all, and that failing to continuously explore ways to streamline, to provide, and to respond to students’ needs cannot happen. We have to be comfortable with meeting novel problems with novel solutions—that’s what lawyering is!

So why me? I won’t fill space with a list of all of my positions, affiliations and experiences here - we can chat about that when you see me in the hallways or at one of our campaign events. Instead, I’ll tell you that I’m a person that went across the country for undergrad just to come all the way back the other way for law school. I’m a person who (as an 8-year-old, to be fair) jabbed himself with his EpiPen because he wanted to know how it worked. I’m a person who lives in a historic dorm on Main Grounds, without a bathroom or a kitchen, to connect with and understand folks more deeply across all graduate schools. I take the harder (and odder) paths. And I’m a person who, perhaps above all else, loves meeting new people.

I’m running for vice president because SBA has always offered an incredible opportunity to put my curiosity, care, and liveliness to work. It’s the only Law School organization that every single student belongs to, and it needs to gather and distill the will of each and every one of you in a way it hasn’t yet. That means forming an SBA that’s a proper forum, advocate, and supporter all in one. That means an SBA that uses all tools at its disposal to not merely weather the winds of change, but press onwards, like Mark, Rachel, and I have done our entire time here. That means an SBA that truly serves you.