Rowan University Student Government Association (SGA) held its fourth meeting of the semester on March 24.

President Zackary Brown announced the official title change of the role of assistant vice president of diversity, equity, & inclusion (DEI), which will now be titled the Assistant Vice President of Student Advocacy and Community Belonging (SACB). 

Brown maintained the sentiment that the mission would stay the same as he had said in the past three meetings. 

“As you can see, everything is pretty much the same. The only thing that has really crossed out is diversity, equity, and inclusion, but everything has just been replaced with student advocacy and community belonging,” said Brown. 

With the role still vacant, and filled by President Zackary Brown, a special election was held to fill the position that saw four people run.

Edward Simonson, a freshman mechanical engineering major, whose speech mainly highlighted his focus on inclusivity, leadership, and making sure others feel welcomed in their environments.

“But when I lead others, I try to be that person, someone who’s compassionate and tries to get people involved and feeling comfortable in new or sometimes stressful situations,” said Simonson. 

Julia Fitzgerald, a Sophomore and the co-president of SOUL, focused her speech on emphasizing the importance of creating solutions led by people who truly understand the challenges being addressed. 

“So we want solutions by people that look like us. So I’m really innovative when it comes to fostering those practices and having those tough conversations. Because necessarily, when we’re talking about diversity and inclusion, it’s not necessarily when it comes to advocacy addressing that problem, it’s about finding those actionable items to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to actually step in and do the work that doesn’t just fix the solution, but every solution,’” said Fitzgerald.

The next candidate was freshman political science major and freshman class senator Justin H. Green. His speech highlighted his desire to advocate for policies that support all students. 

“I want to highlight what I try to bring to any table. Hopefully, as we grow as a university and we navigate this current political climate, we also have someone who advocates for policies that benefit other students who may not look like me, that has come from a different socio-economic background, a different sexuality, whatever the case may be, I think it’s important that we are advocates for DEI and ensuring that we have a university and policies that reflect the community that we’re in,” said Green.

Green was also met with the question by Freshman class senator Dylan Volinski on whether he was running for this position for the fact he wanted to advocate for DEI, or if he just wanted a position on the SGA board due to him running for the role of Chief Financial Officer, and losing to current CFO Molly Fitzpatrick. 

“This isn’t the first SGA position you’ve gone for this year. I just want to make sure that your dedication is here for this role. Specifically. My question is, what are you planning to do in this position if you’re elected,” said Volinski.

To which Green responded. 

“I think the reason why I ran for that other position is because I had experience in managing a budget, but I ran into this position because I believe that I have a certain set of skills to be an advocate for those who are different from me and hopefully create change to this university,” said Green. 

The final candidate was junior philosophy and sociology double major and current SGA Student Trustee Yuval Saar who focused on expanding current initiatives, continuing student discussions on relevant issues, and providing leadership training to enhance student advocacy.

“I have clear achievable goals that I would love to continue working on. So firstly, I would love to continue and expand the initiatives I’m currently working on. I’d also like to continue with day of conversation and past years, our topics have been what’s most relevant to the political climate at the time, so we’ll definitely continue with that. I would also like to implement all sorts of different workshops to help student leaders learn their own skills and be able to produce student advocacy,” said Saar. 

Once the discussion period began, it became clear the two candidates that the senate wanted for the role. With half of the senators voicing their support for Green, and the other half for Saar. 

In the end, Saar beat Green with 55% (63) of the votes going to Saar and 30% (34) of the votes going to Green. 

Another special election was held to fill the vacant position of AVP of University Of Advancement. Where Palak Patel beat out opponent Ava Perroti with 76% of the votes going to Patel. 

During the Student concerns portion, Jimmy Flocco expressed concerns about federal-level policies affecting higher education, particularly the changes following the Department of Education’s Dear Colleague letter. Where he attended a town hall meeting and noticed that university HR discouraged discussing hypotheticals, despite student concerns about potential policy changes. 

“My question is, how can we elevate our own voices, SGA members or not, to help the university anticipate these attacks that have been promised by the administration that is currently in office at the town hall? My constituents have said that the direct response and the consolidation of roles that previously were treated to DEI had little to no consideration for not necessarily students in general, but students who don’t have representation in SGA,” said Flocco. 

To which Brown responded. 

“I do believe that especially with this position for student advocacy and community belonging, we now have the opportunity to advocate with the student body. If there are concerns or hypotheticals, this is the perfect opportunity to bring those to the table with our university administration and work together to address them. It’s time for us to definitely work together and address any concerns in collaboration,” said Brown.

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