The Student Senate passed a bill Monday night linking its stipends to the level of tuition and fees, meaning that if they increase, the Student Senate stipends will also go up.
With the bill, the student body president will receive the full amount of an academic year’s tuition and fees at a full-time level, including differential tuition, segregated and other university fees; housing and course fees won’t be included and the pay is set to the previous year’s tuition. The vice president will receive 75 percent of the president’s stipend, treasurer/chief of staff and directors 50 percent, secretary 40 percent and parliamentarian and the student court chief justice 25 percent.
“Student Senate has a significant impact on most of the departments on campus, in our funding and in our control,” said Jacob Kampen, Student Senate Finance Director. “So it’s good we are able to pay people for the work they are responsible for and make sure they are held to a higher standard.”
This increase in the Student Senate stipend will reflect on their segregated fees allocation that UW-Eau Claire students currently pay. If tuition and fees increase, their stipend will also increase, and therefore, their segregated fees allocation would go up as well.
Student Body President Dylan Jambrek said it’s difficult for them to have jobs outside Student Senate, because the work they do is very demanding and with the stipend raise, they would be able to do a better job.
“This is not a normal job, this is a job where we are serving the public and representing all the students,” he said. “It’s important to make sure that everybody can actually do the job.”
Currently, the student body president receives $5,000 a year – a sum that makes the president very underpaid for his 40 hours a week of work, said Kampen.
“That’s two thousand hours (a year), so it’s estimated that he is making $2.50 an hour for that work,” Kampen said. “(Now) this is going to go up 50 cents, which is still underpaid.”
Academic Affairs Director Mark Morgan said the responsibilities of the directors have gone up within the last couple of years and should therefore be paid for the amount of work they put on.
“With the Blugold commitment, academic affairs were managing, roughly, a $1.5 million budget,” Morgan said. “Next year, I guess, it will be an 11, $12 million budget, which is an entirely complicated process that the director has to manage.”
For Kampen and Morgan, this stipend will ensure that more qualified individuals are going to be running for the positions.
“When you increase the stipend a little, you’re making sure that what you are attracting is talent,” Morgan said. “Not just attracting talent, but
retaining talent.”
With this bill, the Student Senate stipends increase is now amended to the Student Senate bylaws, but it still needs to be approved by Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich, who Kampen is not expecting any sort of disagreement from.
