Several student groups are calling for members of the undergraduate student government to defer their stipend increase until next year.
About 10 student groups have signed a recently drafted letter that asks the members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council to put the money used to pay for their stipend raises back into a fund dedicated to supporting student groups.
This summer, councilmembers voted to almost double their stipends, which caused available USAC funding for student groups to decrease by $35,000.
The letter also asks USAC to pass a constitutional amendment barring councilmembers from raising their own stipends, said Nicole Fossier, a board member for Bruin Alliance.
Instead, councilmembers would only have the power to raise stipends for future councils.
The executive board of Bruin Alliance, a student group that had two candidates in the spring elections, drafted the open letter to USAC and started reaching out to student groups about it Tuesday, said Fossier, a fourth-year political science and psychology student.
Additionally, the letter criticizes councilmembers for not publicizing and explaining their decision to the UCLA student body, as they said they would after the stipend increase was approved.
Several political student groups, such as Bruin Democrats, Bruin Republicans and Young Americans for Freedom at UCLA, have already expressed their support for the letter. The Lebanese Social Club, Theta Xi and the Bruin Marksmanship Society, among others, have also signed the letter.
In August, councilmembers nearly doubled their own stipends with a 8-1-0 vote. The decision also raised stipend caps for other members of USAC and for student group leaders.
To pay for the increases, $35,000 was taken from the USAC Student Organizations Operational Fund, which funds some student group expenses and is typically underutilized by student groups.
The fund has run a surplus of more than $100,000 in recent years.
This fall, student groups received about $110 less on average than they did last year because more student groups applied for funding and because of the USAC stipend increase.
Patrick Malkoun, president of the Lebanese Social Club who supports the letter, said the group saw their funding from USAC drop by more than $150.
Because of the drop in the group’s funding, the fourth-year classics and political science student said group members have to host fundraisers now that would usually take place only in the spring.
“My biggest issue that my board and I had wasn’t so much the digits themselves,” Malkoun said. “It’s a matter of principle and it’s pretty shady for a student organization to request for a stipend increase for their own administration.”
William Chakar, president of Bruin Republicans and a signatory for Young Americans for Freedom, said he thinks the negative results of the councilmember stipend raise are evident in the decrease in student group funding.
He said he thinks the USAC bylaws should be amended so councilmembers do not vote on their own stipends again.
Saundra Albers, the president of Bruin Democrats and a proponent of the letter, said she thinks USAC’s stipend increase vote constituted a conflict of interest. The third-year astrophysics student added that she disapproved of USAC raising its stipends during the summer, when fewer students were on campus.
“I think it’s bad oversight on their part in not representing the students over the summer when there weren’t many people here to voice concerns about it,” Albers said.
Internal Vice President Avi Oved, the only councilmember to vote against the stipend increase, said that he plans to hold a town hall meeting by the end of the quarter for student groups to voice their opinions about USAC bylaws.
“It’s important for these groups to make noise because if they don’t, nothing’s going to happen,” Oved said.
He added that he would consider proposing a change to the USAC bylaws based on the student group demands he hears at the meeting.
USAC President John Joanino could not be reached for comment.
Fossier said Bruin Alliance and other student groups are still in the process of contacting other organizations about the letter.
Students who have questions about the letter can email contact@bruinalliance.org or reach out to executive board members of Bruin Alliance for more information.
Contributing reports from Alex Torpey and Bailey Monte, Bruin contributors.