The Student Government Association’s (SGA) reasoning for paying executive board members thousands of dollars – $29,351 total – every year is weak at best.
Executive officers, the explanation goes, cannot find part-time jobs because of how many hours they put into SGA – poor, overworked executive officers. They probably eat ramen noodles and drink coffee after 6 p.m. sometimes, too. To think, members of our student body highly involved in campus not being compensated for their time.
Oh wait, that’s every member of every other highly active student group on campus. SGA is one of the few groups compensated by the university – Resident Student Association officers get paid out of the Resident Activity Fee and the engineer for WRBB gets paid salary – but SGA officers’ pay is the highest. In every other student group, officers that need money get jobs. Yet SGA still spits out the, “Well we’re really busy doing SGA stuff” reason whenever anyone questions them about their paychecks. These stipends are large – sometimes upward of $3,000 a year – and the money comes straight from the Student Activity Fee (SAF) every student pays.
It’s time to switch from Starbucks to dining hall coffee for those late nights in 333 Curry Student Center, SGA officers. You aren’t living off SAF fat anymore. The Finance Board (SGA’s financial branch, essentially) whittled $30,000 off SGA’s $50,000 budget proposal and denied officers the right to stipends.
It’s hard to stress how good a move this is. Will SGA be able to run on a lighter budget? All signs point to yes, especially given the fact those running for direct election were given $500 for their “campaigns,” most of which undoubtedly went to making t-shirts, toys and covering sidewalks with chalk.
Let’s do the math: SGA’s budget last year was $52,967. For next year, they cut it to $23,616. One of the only things they cut out of the budget was the stipends for officers. Of the $29,351 cut, roughly $23,000 of that was stipends. That’s 43 percent of the budget going to paying nine people that hold positions comparable to the executive boards of every other student group, who do it for free. Who decides to pay them? They do. It was a noble move for the board to put an end to the practice.
Of course, some of those in office now are opposed to the idea. SGA President Michael Sabo was quoted this week in The News regarding the Finance Board’s handling of the stipends, saying he’d wish the Finance Board explored more option before their decision. “The decision of the board really hinders that when people’s livelihoods are at stake.”
If SGA stopped living in a fantasy land and realized that students do not care about SGA unless they do something that affects them personally, maybe they would cut the whole bread-and-circus act and just do their job. Advocate for disenfranchised community members. Allocate funds fairly. Challenge the university administration when it needs challenging.
With a budget slashed in half, they’ve made strides toward one of these –unless they choose to reverse the decision, which would be a very regressive move.
