Banding together to form an official student body focused on governance is one of the key ways college students have been able to gain some power in university life. The history of student governance at Rowan University dates back to almost the very beginning of the institution.
The first 50 years of student governmentDuring these early years, the power the Student Council commanded was limited. Under Glassboro Normal School’s first principal, Dr. Jerohn J. Savitz, the school environment felt largely like a “glorified high school,” wrote Dr. Robert Bole, Glassboro State College administrator and historian, in his book, “More Than Cold Stone.”
Not until the reign of the institution’s second leader, Dr. Edgar F. Bunce, would students at what was then called Glassboro State Teachers College have a hand in policy formulation. In the fall 1938 semester, Bunce asked students at an administrative assembly to weigh in on the pros and cons of abolishing final exams.
Bunce’s efforts to bring students into college policy formation gave rise to forums held twice a semester where students could voice their opinions. “Like the procedures of the ancient Greek Assembly, anyone could make a proposal, speak on it and vote on its disposition,” Bole wrote.
Dr. Thomas E. Robinson, who was appointed president of Glassboro State Teachers College in 1952, built upon the progress Bunce had made nurturing student government. During this time, “students began to take a more active interest in college organization and government,” Bole wrote.
The 1958–1959 academic year brought students new chances to lead as members of numerous new college governing committees, most notably the Council on Student Life. Now, students were responsible for approving charters for new organizations, planning programming and approving budgets.
The 1961–1962 academic year became a turning point for student governance at the institution. Under a new constitution, the Student Council now consisted of an assembly and a senate and used the name “Student Government Association.” By this time, the organization was “anticipating a larger role in determining college policies and seeking to discard vestiges of high school associations,” Bole wrote.
The early 1960s saw the Student Government Association take up new causes and achieve new goals, from organizing weekend activities to facilitating the installation of a swimming pool. At this time, Bole wrote, “Impartial observers would have been justified in awarding Glassboro’s student leaders a high performance rating for their achievements.”
Throughout the 1960s, SGA presidents achieved change primarily through diplomatic communication rather than through confrontation. They met regularly with President Robinson. Glassboro State College students’ ability to achieve policy changes through this face-to-face communication and diplomacy was a refreshing departure from the often-adversarial relationships seen between college students and administration during the 1960s that set the tone for the future of student governance.
“Dr. Robinson’s office door was always open to both student leaders and individual students,” Bole wrote. All-class student assemblies and “Meet the President” seminars further facilitated communication.
Dr. Mark M. Chamberlain, who was appointed college president in January 1969, had not only served as a member of the student government association during his undergraduate years at Franklin & Marshall College but had also written a new constitution for the organization. As college president, Chamberlain encouraged increased student participation in making decisions about college issues.
During the 1969–1970 year, Bole wrote, “Glassboro’s brand of student activists won virtually all of its demands” in dorm policies and academic freedom. The Student Senate gained the right to block the implementation of new policies pending discussion with the college president.
SGA in the 1980s“As president, I believed that my job was to represent one stakeholder and one stakeholder only, which was students,” he said.
Forrest’s dedication to putting the interests of students front and center meant he was sometimes “a pain” from the administration’s standpoint. He views the SGA during the time of his presidency as “much more adversarial” in its relations with college administration.
“Our generation was closer to the ‘60s, and in a lot of ways, that ‘60s ethic still inspired us,” Forrest said. “We would get out there and protest when times demanded it.” In response to a housing policy change that prohibited guests after midnight, for example, students held a candlelight vigil outside of Hollybush.
“When we met with the administration, we weren't just whining—we did our homework and had legitimate reasons for things,” Forrest said. “One of the accomplishments of SGA during that era was that ability to really listen to students and have our facts together before we talked to the administration.”
While their relationship was occasionally adversarial in a professional sense, Forrest developed a bond with President Herman D. James, with whom he met weekly.
“We always joked that, since Dr. James started the same year that we did, it was almost like he was in our class,” Forrest said. “In a way, we kind of ‘grew up’ together.”
Glassboro State College’s Student Government Association administered a budget exceeding $1 million in the 1980s—a big responsibility. A tangible accomplishment of the student government in this era was the resurrection of a proposal that had been languishing since the 1970s to build a Student Rec Center.
“Our class wouldn't get to see the benefit of it, but it would help others in the future,” Forrest said.
Transitioning through the 1990s
While the Rowan Gift of 1992 transformed Glassboro State College forever, it also transformed the SGA.
Jason Levin served in the SGA all four years of his undergraduate studies at Rowan, first as freshman and sophomore class president (in 1993-1994 and 1994-1995, respectively) and then, for the 1995-96 and 1996-97 years, as SGA president.
“During the mid-90s, all of these committees were coming up through the institution to ask, how do we think about ourselves? Where do we go?” Levin said. “Because Dr. James was so student-centered, student voices were in those conversations.”
With each incremental year, the college community became more excited about what the institution was doing with the Rowan Gift.
“People started to feel what it meant to be Rowan,” Levin said.
As SGA president, Levin got the chance to meet Henry Rowan himself. Levin brought the philanthropist to an SGA meeting—where he was voted an honorary member.
Major evolutions in technology, too, presented both challenges and opportunities in the ‘90s. Getting the computers in the SGA office connected to the internet was a priority.
“It was really the advent of technology,” Levin said. “We were going from paper to the internet. Every future student government would be able to benefit from the internet in the SGA suite.”
When prices at the Market Basket store on campus were significantly higher than at the local grocery stores and the closest Wawa, the SGA made a cost comparison to show the administration.
“Because we had built trust, we were taken seriously,” Levin said. “We were coming to them with the facts.”
That trust was a direct result of consistent efforts on the part of both the SGA and the college administration to communicate and negotiate. In the 1990s, Levin said, President James came to SGA meetings.
“He might not have been able to do all the things we wanted, but at the very least, he was hearing us out,” Levin said. “Having him as a leader fostered dialogue. From talking to other student governments in New Jersey and across the country, that open communication isn’t typical.”
Accounting major Levin couldn’t help but notice discrepancies between the audited statement and the actual statement of the SGA budget. He discovered that the SGA budget was based on conservatively estimated student activity fees—and that the excess amount of money generated by these fees each year had been placed in a capital improvement account. By the time Levin questioned the numbers, that account held $973,000.
“What an opportunity, to have almost a million dollars in the mid-1990s,” Levin said. Moving the unused funds from a regular checking account to treasury notes with a higher interest rate allowed the SGA to make $80,000 in interest in the first year alone.
“We had a better approach to the investments of our capital improvement accounts,” Levin said.
Rather than pursuing change through confrontation and protests, Levin asked, “How can we insert ourselves into conversations as many ways as possible to be able to get that change?”
Although the SGA president wasn’t invited to President James’ cabinet meetings, Levin discovered that he could mingle informally with the chief of staff, the provost, the head of finance and others in the cabinet in the lobby before the meetings began. “If you keep showing up with consistency, you can build trust to continue the conversation, and that's where things happen,” Levin said. “That was the tone that I wanted to set throughout the whole student government—let's show up consistently and build trust.”
The SGA today“During my time there, SGA became a more forward-facing group, a group more interested in the well-being of the student body,” said former SGA President Rbrey Singleton, who held the role in 2019. Singleton was involved in the association for all four years of his undergraduate studies.
“The expansion of the Student Center, the addition of the solar-powered tables on the back patio, the installation of the Prof Pride statue in 2018, the on-campus food pantry, ‘The Shop,’ the resource center that still stands today—all of that happened during this time,” Singleton said.
Another accomplishment was changing the election system so that all SGA representatives on the board are now directly elected, giving every student on campus a voice.
“The focus of SGA has changed,” Singleton noted. “SGA still can be adversarial when it needs to, but the SGA today is taking on an advocacy-focused role and trying to find ways to deliver new and innovative and necessary services to students.”
A particular example of the SGA’s work to ensure student well-being captured national news attention in 2019. When protestors visited the campus holding discriminatory signs and, Singleton remembers, “spewing some hateful things that made members of our student body feel unsafe,” students organized an impromptu counterprotest in response.
“I've never seen so many students fill the back patio,” he said. “The whole university pretty much stopped for this.”
With President Ali A. Houshmand and then-dean of students and student government adviser Dr. Richard Jones, Singleton and others in the SGA worked to figure out a plan.
“We wanted to support the students in their protest, and we wanted to keep the event safe,” Singleton said. “We turned this event that was full of hate and exclusion into an event full of peace and inclusion, and that’s huge.”
Throughout its nearly century-long history, student governance at Rowan has transformed, but it always retained sight of the most important thing: representing students.
“It's my hope for this Centennial that SGA’s present and future leaders will continue to build on the strong legacy of advocacy and student well-being that exists within the SGA,” Singleton said. “I hope that the Student Government Association continues to make a difference on our campus for the next 100 years and beyond.”
Favorite moments: Fun in student governmentFor example, what 1996-1998 SGA president Jason Levin considers his “biggest accomplishment” in student governance wasn’t made as SGA president at all but instead as freshman class president: frozen yogurt.
“Upperclassmen had access to frozen yogurt, but we didn’t, so we fought for it,” Levin said.
It may sound like a trivial endeavor in comparison with Levin’s other pursuits as SGA president, but “in the ‘90s, frozen yogurt was all the rage,” Levin remembered. “When we got it, I was so emotional—like, ‘Oh my God, we got frozen yogurt! Now everybody can have frozen yogurt if they want it.’”
Lighthearted efforts have always had a place in student government, often right alongside more serious student rights issues. When 2019 SGA President R.D. Singleton worked with University administration to support students in a spur-of-the-moment gathering and counterprotest, part of their strategy for keeping the event positive and peaceful was incorporating fun into the gathering. Ice cream and a DJ went a long way toward keeping students’ spirits up.
“It was getting rowdy, but we ended up turning it into a conga line,” Singleton remembers.
At times, the student government used fun methods to make a point.
Keith Forrest, who served as SGA president in 1988, strayed from his predecessors’ tradition of dressing up to meet with the college president. Instead, Forrest sent out a memo to all SGA representatives urging them to wear Hawaiian shirts to an SGA meeting Dr. James was scheduled to attend.
Nearly a decade later, SGA President Levin upped the ante on apparel with attitude. When word got out that the Board of Trustees would be approving university status on Valentine’s Day, 1997, Levin—who acknowledges being “a little bit of a ham”—showed up at the Camden meeting dressed in a King of Hearts costume he’d purchased at a local costume shop.
“I said, ‘As a representative of students, I want to say how much I love Rowan College becoming Rowan University,’” Levin remembered. In a more pointed comment, though, Levin added, “I am the King of Hearts, but unfortunately, I can only pass out carnations because of the upcoming tuition increases.”
To boost attendance at SGA meetings and cure complaints of student apathy in the ‘90s, Levin decided to use a trip to New York City to attend a live taping of the David Letterman Show as motivation for perfect attendance at SGA meetings.
“I wanted to bring more fun to student government,” Levin said. “It was a big deal. After word got out that you got to see a live David Letterman Show for perfect attendance, student government engagement shot up.”