The ASUO (Associated Students Of The University of Oregon) office is located in the Erb Memorial Union 004. (Sebastian Flores/Emerald)
On Sept. 27, the ASUO Senate approved a plan to lower their stipends in order to raise the stipends of student organization leaders.
The new stipend model will pay Tier 3 student organizations a monthly disbursement of $780 and Tier 4 student organizations $1,430. Student organization leaders will be able to be paid up to $299/month.
The ASUO president will now be paid $1,300/month, the vice president will be paid $1,150 and Cabinet secretaries will be paid $550/month.
Legislative officers will be paid a $400/month base stipend, but additional Senate positions could result in up to an additional $300. The Senate president themself can make an additional $600.
In the ASUO judicial branch, justices now make $550/month, and the Chief Justice makes $850/month.
The new stipend plan, written by the financial arm of ASUO President Chloé Webster’s student administration, aims to lower ASUO’s stipends to promote more equity between ASUO and student organizations.
“Historically, there’s been a really big discrepancy between student organizations’ and ASUO officers’ stipends, and that discrepancy has created some tension between student organizations and ASUO,” Webster said. “Coming in, one of our primary goals was to make sure that student organizations know that we support them, and make sure that they feel like ASUO isn’t separate from other student organizations.”
The previous stipend model, which was passed in 2022, attracted controversy due to the large stipends ASUO members received compared to student organization leaders.
Student organization leaders could be paid stipends up to $230/month, while the ASUO president was paid $1,552.50/month. The vice president was paid $1,340, and Cabinet secretaries were paid $730/month.
Legislative officers were paid a $609/month base stipend, but additional Senate positions could result in an additional $304. The Senate president themself used to make an additional $609 –– double the original base Senate stipend.
The 2021-22 ASUO president responsible for the original stipend model, Isaiah Boyd, stated in an Emerald op-ed that the intention behind raising the stipend model was to transition to an “assumed work” model that calculated hourly pay. Boyd himself later came under fire for his role in the EMU removal, where jurisdiction over the EMU was handed to the university without the knowledge or consent of the ASUO Senate.
“At that time, you might notice that the ASUO officers’ stipends were nearly quadrupled from the previous stipend model before that. And they also were based on an hourly system which tried to estimate how many hours officers were working, which is actually illegal,” Webster said.
“Stipends per ASUO regulations are not supposed to be calculated based on a model of hourly pay,” ASUO Vice President Finn Jacobson said. “When the previous administration that was responsible for changing the stipend inflicted those changes and raised ASUO officers’ stipends, student organization pay stayed the same.”
The stipend model passed under Boyd increased ASUO members’ pay by 327%, while the pay of student organizations remained about the same.
“The intention that we heard behind the previous model was to provide increased accessibility to ASUO officership for low income students and for students of color,” Webster said. “What we know now after a couple of years under this model is that it has done neither of those things, because of the way that stipends impact certain types of financial aid. Just this year, under this current model, we’ve already had resignations related to financial aid.”
Jacobson will head a joint committee on stipend equity in which the executive and legislative branches will seek to examine how to increase the equity and accessibility of ASUO to low-income and minority students while simultaneously lowering their stipends for future years.
In other news, the ASUO Senate also approved a $55,000 request made by the Coalition Against Environmental Racism student group for an environmental justice conference.
The request includes $20,000 to be paid to Robert Irwin, son of late environmentalist and TV personality Steve Irwin, to speak at the event. Runners-up for speakers included Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee in 2016. However, Irwin was selected due to his familiarity and name recognition.
