Stipends are payments made to the IUSA president, vice president of Congress, vice president of administration, treasurer and chief of staff.
IUSA President Anne Tinder said the stipends are intended to act as an equalizing force for potential executives, so students who work to pay for their education can run for office. Executives might not have time to work another job 20 to 25 hours a week, so the stipend is intended to compensate for that, she said.
“It’s been really important to me throughout that everyone concerned with this issue realizes that the point of the stipend is to keep student government accessible to students who otherwise would need part-time jobs,” Tinder said.
According to executive members, the traditional stipend has been $3,000 per person. Executives can decline the stipend, which might happen, for example, if he or she is on a full scholarship.
Payments are accredited to each executive’s bursar.
This year, each of the five executives accepted his or her stipend of $3,000 for a total expenditure of $15,000.
These payments were made in the beginning of the semester with the expectation that IUSA would have around $100,000 in its budget, as it has in the recent past.
Instead IUSA was allocated $60,000. IUSA took some money from reserves to create an operational budget of about $66,000.
Since the IUSA budget was less than expected, the stipends comprised almost 23 percent of the IUSA budget instead of 15 percent, as expected.
This higher percentage caused congressman Andrew Guenther, representing off-campus residency, to author a bill in Congress.
The legislation decided the total expenditure on executive stipends be capped at 15 percent of the budget, so IUSA can use most of its funds on programming for students.
“At the end of the day, IUSA is a government,” Guenther said in an email. “We collect mandatory taxes from our constituents in the form of the student activity fee and are charged with dispersing those funds to better our community.”
The bill was rejected Tuesday, after debate centering on the idea that executives run with the expectation of receiving a certain stipend, and if the amount were suddenly reduced, executives with financial need might be forced to step down so they could work another job. This could potentially prevent students with lower income backgrounds from working as an executive.
Congress discussed other possible solutions to the stipend controversy, modeled after other student governments in the Big Ten, including universities paying executives’ tuition or having executive stipend money come from outside student government funding in a separate allocation.
Guenther said he has contacted IUSA’s adviser Steve Veldkamp, assistant dean of students and director of Student Life and Learning, to work on removing executive stipends from IUSA’s budget.
“Hopefully, by meeting with appropriate, relevant parties, we can find a compromise that fairly compensates our executives for their work while ensuring that our budget is not drained in order to pay stipends,” Guenther said. “This, to me, is extremely important and feasible.”
The decision to give IUSA less money than in the past came from the Committee for Fee Review, a student committee that convenes to decide how the student activity fee should be distributed.
The student activity fee goes toward student organizations, like IUSA, as well as services, such as the campus buses or the Health Center.
Associate Dean of Students Carol McCord advises the CFR.
McCord said IUSA’s high amount of reserve funds at the time of its review last spring was the main reason CFR decided to give IUSA less money.
Tinder said the reserve funds serve as insurance so that if IUSA is disbanded, severed from IU or denied funding, the organization can still function for about a year.
With about $60,000 in IUSA reserves, the CFR decided it was not appropriate to continue allocating IUSA $100,000, and instead gave IUSA $60,000 with the intention of returning to the full amount upon expenditure of the reserve funds, McCord said.
This information was in a recommendation from CFR to IUSA written last spring, before this administration began its term. Tinder and IUSA Treasurer Wes Cuprill each said they have not yet read the recommendation.
“We really do strive every day to spend the money we’ve been given in the most effective and positive way for students,” Tinder said.
