From left: Mike Ryan ’70, Duane Deskins ’76, Jill Alper ’87, Rich Culliton ’91, and Grace Simmons ’05. Photograph: Lee Pellegrini

Over a weekend in early December, 36 former UGBC (Undergraduate Government of Boston College) presidents and vice presidents—among them CEOs, attorneys, financial and political consultants, and a college president—representing 30 administrations dating back to the creation of the student government in 1968, gathered at Boston College for what the Alumni Association called a “reunion”—a misnomer not lost on Tim Anderson ’73, who was UGBC president in 1971–72. “Most of these people have never met each other,” observed the Hull-based founder of a company that provides computers to children in developing countries.

And so this exclusive group of almost perfect strangers, some old enough to be the parents of others, came together for a Friday evening dinner and a Saturday morning discussion session in the Yawkey Center’s Murray Room, where they discovered that their experiences in representing student interests at Boston College—while stretched across three decades—shared distinct similarities.

“It’s amazing how much we have in common as [student] leaders,” said Grace Simmons ’05, a management consultant who was president in 2004–05, during Saturday morning’s roundtable. “It says that the pulse of this campus has been consistent for so many years.” Simmons was representing UGBC’s current epoch on a panel composed of presidents from five decades, including Mike Ryan ’70, a lawyer in New York City and the George Washington of UGBC presidents, who served in 1968–69 and speculated that he might have been asked to run “because no one else wanted to do it.”

Simmons made her observation after her fellow panelists, beginning with Ryan, had offered an oral history of the first 30 or so years of UGBC, outlining the challenges each of them faced during their respective terms. The continuity she saw was honestly acquired. Boston College is a big ship, and this collection of former student leaders agreed that changing its course required more time and effort than a single administration could muster.

“You only have a year to move an institution that’s been around for 100 years,” said Duane Deskins ’76, president in 1975–76 and now an assistant U.S. attorney in Ohio. “There’s only so much you can do. If you lay the solid groundwork, you can hand that on to your successor.”

Adam Baker ’03, president in 2002–03 and currently a student at Boston College Law School, agreed—and he would know. On his watch, Allies, a “gay/straight alliance” group, was the first undergraduate gay and lesbian organization to gain University recognition and funding, building on failed efforts by student government administrations back to the early 1990s.

Other issues came and went. In 1970, the still-young undergraduate government famously initiated a student strike over a proposed $500 tuition hike, and protesting tuition increases became a bread-and-butter issue for UGBC candidates and administrations into the 1980s. “If the UGBC president didn’t have a bullhorn in their hands talking about tuition hikes, they probably weren’t doing their jobs,” said Lois Marr Fruhwirth ’83, an executive at Procter & Gamble and UGBC president in 1982–83.

Tuition at the time of the 1970 strike was $2,000. Today it stands at over $35,000, but widespread organizational opposition to tuition increases has all but disappeared as a UGBC priority. “Now, [tuition is] like the utility bill; you know it’s going to go up. Then, there was a sense of ‘why should it go up, and why this much,’” Deskins said.

The reunion’s chief organizer, Bob Sherwood—now a special advisor to the Alumni Association—spent 20 years working with the undergraduate government as dean for student development. “There’s respect for [University] administration,” he said in an interview, “but student governments have felt they have an obligation to work for the good of students.” That sense of obligation sometimes transcended personal views. Brandon Lobb ’93, a law partner in Houston and president in 1992–93, noted: “I was openly conservative and Republican. . . . I remember as a southern conservative standing before the Board of Trustees advocating for a gay and lesbian club,” he said. Simmons pointed to what seems to have become a central aspiration for UGBC administrations: “We wanted to create the world here [at BC] that we wanted out there,” she said.

After the roundtable concluded, Jenn Castillo ’08, an English major from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the current UGBC president, stood up and solicited advice about a presentation she would be making to the Board of Trustees about multicultural issues. She soon sat down with an obliging group of lawyers and business executives at a table near the back of the room.

Read more by Tim Czerwienski