Geiger reflects on win as new SGA president

By Caroline Haviland 

Moira Geiger created a bingo card for herself at the start of 2025 with a different goal for the year in each square, and she just crossed out the box that said “win SGA presidency.”

Geiger, a junior computer science major, was elected on April 17 as the Student Government Association’s student body president for the 2025-26 school year, the organization’s second uncontested presidential election in two years.

The newly-appointed leader’s journey to Rider began at 15 years old when she came to campus to support her cousin on the field hockey team.

As a lifelong field hockey player, Geiger saw the strong dynamic the women had as she attended more games, which ultimately led to her commitment to Rider as one of the women’s field hockey goalkeepers.

“The team’s dynamic hasn’t changed from when I was first watching at 15 to now as a 20 year old. … All the girls are my absolute best friends here. I’m really blessed with that,” said Geiger.

Sarah Fitzpatrick, a junior criminal justice major, is also a player on the women’s field hockey team and has been Geiger’s roommate for the past two years. She attributed their friendship to helping her through numerous tribulations.

“We met last year before coming to school because we’re on the field hockey team. It took us a while to get close, but we went through a lot of things,” said Fitzpatrick. “We got COVID at the same time and were quarantined together, which brought us together. I value our friendship a lot.”

Despite committing to play field hockey, Geiger realized she could participate in numerous clubs and organizations when she arrived her freshman year, ensuring her college experience would not be “entirely athletics.”

Geiger was hesitant to join SGA at first due to the possible difficulty of balancing her sport with the organization’s duties.

To find out more, she messaged Emma Cordero, SGA’s current vice president of student affairs and a player on the women’s soccer team, and was invited to attend one of SGA’s meetings to see how she liked it.

“The rest is history,” Geiger said.

By her second year, she moved up to vice president of university affairs and realized how attainable it was to balance her commitments by delegating labor to her fellow executive board.

 Now heading into her third and final year at Rider, Geiger plans to make sure that while the university welcomes a new president and provost, SGA keeps the current relationship it has with the administration.

“Our faculty and administration are really good at being involved with us. And that’s something I really want to keep pushing for next year too,” said Geiger. “This is a staple that we have, this open line of communication.”

Geiger also wants to ensure any SGA-related events and meetings are “very welcoming” to keep students involved, which helps maintain consistent student feedback to relay to the university president and their cabinet.

For this year’s elections, the executive board positions of vice president of communications, vice president of student affairs, vice president of university affairs and vice president of class connections went through an appointment-based process and interview with current SGA members instead of being featured on the ballot like years prior.

Geiger said none of these positions are uncontested, and SGA saw a significant increase in candidates for these roles compared to the ones on the ballot.

“I feel like we’ve seen less people go for president because they’re kind of scared of the work and putting themselves out there, even though all the other people on the executive board do the same amount of work,” said Geiger. “There is not a big dropoff.”

Once her time at Rider concludes, Geiger plans to continue to play college field hockey and pursue her master’s and doctorate’s degree at another university, calling herself “a very big school person.”

As she looks to her future presidency and beyond, Geiger has a testament to mirror her mentality: “I feel that you can’t complain about something if you’re not doing any work to change it. That’s been my whole involvement mindset. … If you want the best experience at it, you have to work for it.”

Journey New is a copy editor for The Rider News and is the student organizations committee chair for SGA. They had no part in the writing or editing of this story.