It’s elections season, which means The Review has to stir up some drama yet again. This time they are advocating that ASSU Senator salaries should be rerouted through DGen, which will compensate Senators and Cabinet members who “display financial need.” Their proposed solution to a nonexistent problem reveals the complete lack of thought they put into this referendum. In the process, The Review explicitly lies to the student body in their article.
Here is the explicit lie in their article: “And yet, their salaries are funded by the student activities fee, meaning they come directly from the pocket of the average student.” Wrong! Our salary is actually funded through the ASSU Endowment, not the student fee. This is, unfortunately, not the full extent of their lack of awareness.
The Review fails to realize the law makes an explicit distinction between student government officials and the position of VSO officers. Student government officials are entitled a stipend, not a salary. This distinction is very important because senators, much like the officers of VSOs, would easily be paid below the minimum wage for the number of hours we work. Even more troubling is that, even if VSO officers were paid salaries, they would probably exceed the legal cap on the number of hours they can work. While the Review does not contend that VSO officers should not get paid, they naively advocate that, similar to the officers of VSOs, Senators should not get paid without considering the legal differences between the two. The Senate’s stipend is in accordance with the law, whereas, officer salaries could not be justified under this exception and would lead to legal problems for the ASSU.
It is precisely The Review’s failure to understand this regulatory framework that leads them to create a nonsense solution to a nonexistent problem. There are two policy options for paying senators. One is the current system where all senators, independent of financial circumstance, are paid a consistent salary. The advantage of this system is that the financial status of a senator — private and sensitive information — is not revealed. The alternative, proposed by The Review, involves funds being sent through DGen. DGen cannot rightly compensate senators for serving on the Senate to make up for the opportunity cost of potentially having pursued work study instead without entering a slippery slope. DGen will then have to pay any FLI student who pursues any activity that does not pay in order to make up for the cost they incurred from not pursuing work study instead of that activity.
I doubt The Review consulted with DGen about the office’s ability to implement their proposal. The DGen Office operates the Opportunity Fund, which provides low-income students with short-term funds for large unexpected costs like school supplies or emergency travel funds. Additionally, anybody who has talked to DGen knows that it is critically understaffed and overworked. To add on the business of verifying the financial status of all senators and allocating the salaries of low-income senators is neither in line with the way DGen works nor is it cognizant of its capacity to take on more work.
The ASSU recognizes the incredible work that the DGen Office takes and fully supports their mission. The Undergraduate Senate has partnered with the DGen often in the past, with two of the most recent examples being funding spring break meals through use of the Senate discretionary and a $35,000 allocation establishing the Full House Fund, designed to reduce the financial barrier for low-income students and students on financial aid to apply for funds to subsidize club dues or fees.
In conclusion, The Review’s referendum is a poorly-thought-out solution to a nonexistent problem intended more to stir up drama than to address legitimate student concerns.
— Jayaram Ravi ’19, 18th Undergraduate Senate
Contact Jayaram Ravi at jayaramr ‘at’ stanford.edu.