Rowan University’s Student Government Association (SGA) held its first senate meeting of 2025 on Feb. 3 and it was organized to be a little different than the usual senate meetings. SGA decided to turn their first meeting into a “constituent Monday,” where different club organizations had the opportunity to table, network, and get to know each other. 

Yuval Saar, the SGA student trustee took a moment to explain the format of the special meeting. 

“We took our first formal Senate meeting and kind of shifted it to constituent on Monday, so it’s just an event that’s more so focused on all of the students that we represent. We’re gonna be doing a bunch of different things to not only highlight them but also highlight the resources that we’re able to offer them,” said Saar. 

The meeting still had some formal business to address.

Society Of Automotive Engineers presented their travel request for a competition in Québec. This would not be the first time the club would be going on this trip, but it would be the first time they opened the trip up to underclassmen who wanted to gain experience. 

Senior President of the club Anthony Tramontana believes that this is a great experience for the club as a whole and that it could bring some great exposure to the school. 

“It’s also great for the members to experience a competition like this as early as they can. It gives great experience in team building and teamwork, and it’s really a lot of exposure for the school as well as the engineering department because top teams go to this. A lot of top schools going to be going to these events,” said Tramontana. 

The presentation did raise some questions about the transportation to the event, and other factors regarding the country crossing trip. 

The biggest skeptics came from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICE), who felt that if the club was opening the trip up to members beyond the upperclassmen E-board, they should figure out a plan to independently fund their travel. 

“If there are more people going to this, I feel like they should be able to fundraise that on their own. It also doesn’t feel like a type of the warrants additional funding from the SGA, and if they really wanna go, they should be able to pay for it,” said ACHIE club senator Youssef Badaoui.

In the end, the Club was approved for the maximum amount and will be going to Québec. 

Once the formal meeting business concluded, the social events commenced, organizations networked with each other and played a game of “human bingo” where the winners were able to take home some Rowan SGA merchandise. 

Overall, the first SGA senate meeting of the spring semester relaxed and productive way for other clubs and organizations to get acquainted with each other and kick off the semester.

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