Grant Cochran is not the first official of the Student Government Association to find himself surrounded by controversy while in office.

In January 2010, The Crimson White reported that four SGA officials, including James Fowler, who later became the organization’s president, spent more than $4,700 of SGA funds to travel to California for a community service event scheduled around the BCS National Championship. A UA student working for the Community Service Center also traveled at the SGA’s expense.

At the time, the Code of Laws that regulated the SGA’s activities said expenditures of more than $1,000 couldn’t be made without the SGA Senate’s approval, which officials acknowledged they never received, according to the Jan. 21 edition of The Crimson White.

Although the students did not use SGA funds to purchase game tickets, their travel expenses – including airline flights, hotel accommodations and food – came from the group’s budget, The Crimson White reported.

A week after the allegations surfaced, then-SGA President Stephen Oliver posted a statement on the organization’s website saying he wanted to “resolve misunderstandings about the situation,” according to a Jan. 27 article in The Tuscaloosa News.

Oliver pointed out that the Code of Laws said that while expenses of more than $1,000 were “subject to” Senate approval, such consent was not mandated, the article read.

Oliver also created two committees to complete an “in-depth review” of the SGA Constitution and student Code of Laws. Although he never apologized for the expenses, he did apologize for “the appearance of impropriety,” according to a later article in The Tuscaloosa News.

More than 10 years prior to the incident, Minda Riley, an SGA presidential candidate and daughter of former Gov. Bob Riley, reported being assaulted at her home in 1993, according to published reports at the time.

Following this and other incidents, University President Roger Sayers indefinitely suspended the student government and the elections process, calling them “a sick system [that’s] got to be fixed,” according to The Crimson White’s Feb. 3, 1993 edition. The SGA remained disbanded until the Fall 1996 semester.

Subhed: Former presidents reflect on campus politics

Despite the controversies, 1982 SGA President Tom Campbell said SGA officials are generally good characters who get involved with student politics.

“Occasionally, they get wrapped up in the day-to-day politics of it and get lost and even scared,” Campbell said. “Once they’re scared, they act out and away from their ambitions and make bad decisions; decisions that probably went against their internal code.”

Campbell said he was backed by both the Machine, a select coalition of traditionally white fraternities and sororities designed to influence campus politics, and The Crimson White during his presidency. He recalled a similar instance of unethical decisions after his term as SGA president.

“The year following my year as president, a couple of guys tapped into an independent candidate’s phone,” he said. “Their actions weren’t Machine endorsed. In fact, the Machine didn’t even know the event happened.

“It just serves as another example that people can act out of character and get lost from what it is they believe in. It was a stupid and immoral thing to do, and it all happened because they lost all perspective of how important their job was at that moment,” Campbell recalled.

Dale Wallace, who was elected SGA president in 1975, said the Machine, which endorsed his campaign, was different in the 1970s and before.

“At that time, sororities were not involved with the Machine,” he said. “Its focus ensured that whatever was best for the University was always first and foremost.”

However, as the Machine became more and more political, Wallace said, there was less focus on what its students should value.

“There was a shift that occurred, in my opinion, as evidenced by the University’s enrollment growth,” Wallace said. “When this happened, the fraternities were able to gain the ability to send out significant numbers to vote. I think more openness is a good thing on the surface, but if you’re doing this not to back the best candidate, but to reassert your control, it adds to the whole idea of power leading to corruption.

“Whether it be the Machine or another political group, if you lose sight of your purpose, then you’ve gone astray. Any political party that doesn’t have its primary concern to serve its constituents, in this case the University’s students, has lost its purpose.”

Wallace said that moving forward, there needs to be a complete and thorough investigation to determine whether improprieties occurred and an equally diligent process to correct them.

“Following the investigations, there should be a fair and transparent report of what occurred and what’s being done to ensure that the problem is being corrected,” he said. “Without such a report, the entire University community suffers because of a breakdown of trust.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on Feb. 19, 2019.