University Senate held its third meeting of the semester over Zoom on April 4.

Senate President Bill Freind addressed President Ali A. Houshmand’s speech during the morning ribbon cutting, as well as at the night reception, where he spoke about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

“This is going to come as a surprise to a lot of people—he started talking about DEI, and he did it through his own story. He grew up very poor in Iran under the Shah, before the Ayatollah. I think he was the seventh of seven children. His parents were illiterate. His brother saved up $50 in cash and a one-way plane ticket to get him to England and said, ‘Go ahead and get an education,’” said Freind. “His point was: He got a chance from his brothers. And he said that’s what DEI does. It takes people who ordinarily wouldn’t get a chance and gives them a chance, For him, the “E” in DEI stands for Excellence,” said Freind.

Freind also pointed out that this was the most vocal he has seen President Houshmand be towards DEI since the presidential election. 

“That was by far the most full-throated defense I’ve heard him give of DEI after the election,” said Freind. 

Another topic of conversation in the Senate was classes requiring textbooks that are costly, and students ending up not using them. 

“It came up again at the last Board of Trustees meeting. That was the meeting in which the tuition increases were posted. And students spoke not only about the tuition increase, they spoke about the textbook prices,” Freind said. “Jean Edelman said, ‘Is there anything we can do about it?’ And she said it in a very nice way. But when Jean Edelman says, Is there anything we can do about it, the answer is yes, we got to do something about it.”

Freind continued to talk about his personal experience with textbooks. 

“One of the problems we have every year is students register for courses, they see a list of required textbooks at Barnes & Noble, they go to Barnes & Noble, and they realize that a good chunk of those textbooks are actually not required or never even used,” said Freind. “And I know this from personal experience, because I told my own children, ‘I will pay for your textbooks.’ And they would always say, ‘Give me two weeks and let me see what I need.'”

Freind then went on to emphasize that faculty go to their department and ensure the textbooks are actually needed. 

“So if you are in an academic department, I would urge you to go back to your department and say, ‘Can we review syllabi to make sure that the required textbooks are really required,” said Freind. 

Freind continued to express concerns about the Rowan Online initiative. 

 “I can easily just say the same as last meeting, talking past each other. Michael Roark is continually saying, ‘How do we develop excellent online education?’ And everyone else is saying, ‘We don’t know how this is going to work,’” Said Freind. Not in terms of money, in how these courses are going to be designed. So there is supposed to be another meeting, which will be open to everyone and will be nothing but questions. It hasn’t been scheduled yet. I would urge you to attend if you can.”

For comments/questions about this story DM us on Instagram @thewhitatrowan or email news@thewhitonline.com