The undergraduate Student Association (SA) Senate rejected a resolution that would have increased the e-board’s salaries by at least three percent after a tense hour-long discussion Wednesday evening. The vote was eight ayes, five nays and six abstains.
The resolution — introduced by SA President Aisha Adam and two other senators — sought to align the e-board’s pay to the highest hourly wage granted to a UB student employee, which, as of now, is around $23.00, Adam told The Spectrum.
The hourly wage would have been multiplied by an estimate of 20 hours a week, amounting to a weekly stipend of at least $460.00; which would increase if the highest hourly wage granted to UB student employees were to rise from $23.00 in the coming years.
Two years prior, the Senate voted to raise the e-board’s pay from a flat, annual stipend of $15,750 to a weekly stipend of $375, now amounting to $19,500 annually. The e-board also expanded from three to five positions last spring, with the vice presidential role split into three separate roles for advocacy, clubs and events.
Adam told The Spectrum that her biggest concerns were for the president and treasurer positions, citing “eight years of SA records” that show presidents “consistently overshooting upwards of almost one and a half or double their weekly hour stipends.”
Adam said she averaged 35.4 hours per week and only had been compensated for 880 out of 1,557 total hours.
“It's not, it's not minimum wage level work, it's high skill work,’” Adam said. “It requires constant attention. I get calls in the middle of the night. There is no clocking out.”
Nasra Isse, the special interest council coordinator, said during the meeting that the low pay is not fair to e-board members.
“Keeping them at the same rate, a lazy one,” Isse said. “It’s not fair to the person that’s actually bringing in and doing the amount of work that you’re supposed to do.”
Many senators — including two vice presidents — were unconvinced, with Vice President for Advocacy Mason Bayer first motioning to deny the resolution which failed by a tight vote of eight ayes and 11 nays.
The vice presidential workloads did not justify the pay increase, Bayer and Vice President for Events Benjamin Lau said. Bayer said he spent “a lot of my time trying to develop and work on making work,” while Lau said he felt “overpaid.”
“There's only so much work in my role that I could do within the position that I have, and I strive to do whatever I could to work up to and devote to that stipend,” Lau said. “I try to do whatever I can to work my stipend, but there's only so much I could do with the quality of work and the responsibilities I'm given.”
Adam told Lau that he was “hitching the role to your personal experience.”
“I’m going to say what I said to you during the election as to why I didn’t back you for president, which is that your experience as VP and your personal feelings about not having lived up to your stipend is irrelevant to the role of vice president for events,” Adam said. “So if you feel like you haven’t earned your stipend some weeks, that does not mean there was not work to be done.”
Ryder Albano, SA’s engineering club council coordinator, had asked what if the work done by this year’s e-board — which would justify the pay increase — isn’t continued by future e-boards, to which Adam said, “Impeach them.”
Senator Grant Peterson said the Senate reaching a two-thirds majority to impeach an e-board member was “unlikely,” citing the appointment of seven club coordinators by the president and treasurer.
“Can you do that if they appoint one-third of the Senate?” Peterson said.
Adam said that she “can’t engage in an argument that is based on the assumption that the senators don’t have integrity,” in response.
Senate Chairperson Aidan Thomas said he agreed with Adam’s logic, but students were not happy with the level of compensation the current officers were getting. With next year being a referendum year — when students vote every two years to keep or discard the $109 mandatory fee that funds SA and its club — the “disenchantment” over the pay was “important to acknowledge,” Thomas said.
“If the referendum doesn’t pass, pardon my French, but we’re in deep s—t,” Thomas said. “It’s important to acknowledge the fact that if we have this organization that students aren’t happy with yet, and we say, ‘Oh, by the way, your money you pay us every year, we’re going to raise the compensation now so we’re paying the VPs more.’”
Adam told The Spectrum that she didn’t regret any of the work she did.
“I just think that it would have been appropriate for SA to pay me, like, three grand more for all of the work I did,” Adam said.
The news desk can be reached at news@ubspectrum.com.
Photo: Courtesy of Myanmar Student Association
