Students from ASUO president to International Student Union director are paid for their work, but until now there hasn’t been a solid system to determine how much money they should receive.
Positions within ASUO-recognized student groups generally receive monthly stipends. A new stipend model will evaluate positions based on degree of authority and time spent working each week. Student positions are paid through the incidental fee.
“We really wanted to come up with a system, even if it just continued what we already had,” Student Finance Senator Helen Stocklin-Enright said.
The Programs Finance Committee currently determines stipend amounts, but PFC doesn’t have a fixed structure on which to base its decisions. As a result, consistency in stipend pay didn’t appear to exist.
“I think there was too much discrepancy between a lot of the people who held the same position,” Student Senator Shantell Rice said.
Both Rice and Stocklin-Enright were members of this year’s PFC.
Because amounts spanned a large range, it was difficult for the PFC to decide how much a new position should receive.
“There was just such a wide variety of pay,” ASUO Accounting Coordinator Jennifer Creighton-Neiwert said. “It was hard to figure out where to start someone. Where do you throw them in somewhere between $15 and $600? It’s pretty sporadic.”
Rice, Creighton-Neiwert and Stocklin-Enright presented three models to a review committee, which approved a multi-tier model focusing on hours worked per week and the amount of power a position carries with it.
“We based the three models off what the committee members wanted, what student group representatives saw as problems in the current model, and what we saw the need for,” Stocklin-Enright said.
Another idea the PFC is considering is tacking on an additional $10 a month for experience. This would apply to people who have worked for a specific student group for at least one year.
The model has yet to be officially presented to the student groups, but the PFC intends to do so in the fall. From that point, it will likely embark on a three-year implementation process that includes moving over to the new model bit by bit.
The new system will be tested winter term next year .
Over the next three years, the PFC will keep an eye on how the process is moving along and will change things as needed.
“I think the most difficult part will be actually implementing the [model],” Rice said. “The changes won’t be too drastic, but the student groups will certainly feel it. That’s why we’re going to gradually work it into the system so it won’t be such a shock.”
Staffers at the Multicultural Center said they disagree with its way of determining pay. They say their group functions communally, and there is no distinguishing between power levels. The new stipend model, they said, will force them to draw lines they don’t want to draw.
“Power is a very strange concept when trying to work within a community,” MCC staff member Mario Cifuentez said. “It’s a hierarchical concept, and we try not to use it.”
Ultimately, however, those who have been working on the model are confident in its ability to fairly and accurately determine stipend amounts, and they think that it will eliminate a lot of the discrepancies currently in existence.
“I hope everybody’s excited,” Rice said. “We’ve been telling groups [about it] for the last two years. Now we’ve finally done it.
“I think it’s pretty fair, so I hope [the student groups will] appreciate that.”