Deficit provokes cap on council scholarships
The ASUSU executive council voted in last night’s council meeting to cap all ASUSU officer scholarships.
This policy replaces the full tuition and fees waiver policy, which included equal monthly stipends for all vice presidents, director positions and members of the academic senate.
Effective next fall, officers will be compensated with a set dollar amount depending on their position. The ASUSU president will receive a $3,000 scholarship per semester, along with five $300 stipends throughout the semester. The executive council vice presidents, the academic senate president, the administrative assistant and the public relations director will receive $2,500 with four $200 stipends. Programming directors will receive $2,400 per semester with no stipends and members of the academic senate will receive $2,300 per semester with no stipends.
According to the two bills that proposed the cap, the need to limit scholarships comes from a deficit in the student government budgets. According to the bills, student government exceeded its allotted budget by nearly $80,000 this semester.
ASUSU Executive Vice President Brent Crosby said: “I believe that (VP for Student Services) Dr. (James) Morales decided to take care of the deficit at this point because of several reasons. First, this is his second year in his position.”
“Second, there are numerous ASUSU representatives that are graduate students who have both higher tuition and fees,” Crosby said. “Third, many of the ASUSU representatives are business students who pay differential tuition, which is $702 a semester per undergraduate and $199 per credit a semester for graduates. The combination of these factors made it the pressing issue that it is.”
Under the new adjustments, members of the academic senate will be cut the most.
In Monday’s academic senate meeting, Morales spoke to members of the academic senate about the proposed cuts to their scholarships. Although the academic senate does not have the authority to vote on the bill, Morales said, “I wanted to share the rationale for the proposed changes with them. It was also good for me to hear any concerns they had.”
Tanner Wright, academic senate president, said Morales gave four criteria for how to allocate compensation funds. He said each position’s workload, the size of their budget, the number of committees they sit on, and the size of the student body each officer represents were all taken into consideration.
Morales proposed higher cuts to the academic senate than the executive council and directors based on these criteria.
Wright said, “Dr. Morales is taking it at a very business-like approach, which totally makes sense.”
Wright said he feels senators do the same amount of work as executive council members and directors. He said it is hard to compare the number of committees a senator sits on to the amount of work they do, and that the number of committees assigned depends on the college the senator represents.
During the council’s discussion, Wright and academic senate pro tempore Cami Lyman spoke in favor of lowering programming director’s scholarships to be closer to the amount allotted to academic senators.
After the bill passed, Wright said, “I understand the reasoning behind it and I agree with the reasoning behind it, but with that reasoning I still feel it could be more equal across the board.”
Morales said, “I’m pleased with the results of the vote. It demonstrates that the ASUSU officers take very seriously their responsibility to help address the fiscal issues that we face. I’m proud of their willingness to confront this head on.”
Morales said the new policy will reduce the budget deficit to $944, which he will be able to balance using a discretionary account in the Office of the Vice President for Student Services.
– rob.jepson@aggiemail.usu.edu