As the last senate meeting before Halloween, the executive board of the SGA wore costumes, and senators were encouraged to dress up for the holiday for a chance to win a prize.

Oct. 20, 2025, marked the third senate meeting of the semester for Rowan’s Student Government Association (SGA). The Senate was run by Vice President Theo Young due to Hope Campbell being absence from the Senate. 

AVP of Academic Affairs Laura Shaban announced that SGA scholarship applications are now open to all students. 

“Everyone in the student body is eligible and encouraged to apply, except the Academic Affairs Committee. and that will be open until Nov. 24 at 4 p.m.,” Said Shaban

With the Students Assembled event on Nov. 11 inching closer, AVP for Advocacy and Student Belonging, Yuval Saar, emphasized the importance of making sure students submit concerns.

“We are still collecting student concerns until tonight, so please submit anything that you want to know about in terms of what’s going on in the university. We’re going to use this form to think about what we want to include on our panel,” said Saar. “You will still have the opportunity to come and participate in the open floor at the end of the event, but if you submit your concerns here, we can almost ensure that they will be covered in the panel that we’re doing. The more concerns that we get, the more we know what we need to include.”

The first motion of new business was a “student special project” request, explained in detail by the SGA’s Chief Financial Officer, Molly Fitzpatrick.

“So this is a fund for students who want to request money just for themselves, individually. It’s not being associated with a club or organization, and we have this because all students on campus pay the SGA fee, so all students should have access to the SGA fee. They shouldn’t have to just be a part of a club. They have everyone pay the fee, so everyone should have the ability to request money,”  said Fitzpatrick. 

Anush Aryal was presenting his request for his trip to SIGGRAPH, a computer science conference taking place in Hong Kong. Aryal asked for anywhere between $500 and $2000. 

The senator for the Association for Computing Machinery’s Committee on Women (ACM-W), Tess Erickson, spoke about how the conference isn’t just a great opportunity for Aryal, but for all of Rowan, due to his being a representative of the school. 

“I think that this is a great opportunity to not only impact students here now with the experience that he will get from going to this conference, but also to get Rowan’s name out there, because he mentioned that he’s been doing a lot of networking stuff. This would be a great way to expand that reach,” said Erickson. 

In the end, Aryal was approved for $2000 and will be going to the SIGGRAPH conference in Hong Kong. 

During the student concerns portion, students spoke about concerns about safety, parking, and the lack of paper towels at Holly Pointe. 

Sophomore Corina Ricatti spoke about social media posts targeting people of color in the wake of the public safety issues happening on campus.

 “I’ll see a very widely used term, derogatory term against black people, but essentially there to associate all black people and brown people with the city of Camden, and I’ll just notice that this is a very serious issue and not much conversation about it,” said Ricatti. “So if I ask a question, what can we do to ensure that valid public safety concerns, aren’t being used to justify, you know, hatred and bigotry, and I understand that a lot of this does come with, you know, frequency biases that some students are coming to the university with, but it should be on us to fight back against this narrative and make the campus feel welcome for all people.”

The next SGA Senate will be held on Nov. 3, 2025.