Undergraduate student government officials plan to submit a proposal that regulates councilmembers’ stipends to a review committee next week, in the hopes of bringing the proposal to a vote during third week.
The proposal asks the Undergraduate Students Association Council to amend its bylaws to prevent future councilmembers from raising their own stipends.
Members of the Internal Vice President’s Office drafted the proposal in response to student backlash against the council’s vote this past summer to nearly double councilmember stipends from $355 to $672 a month. The money for the pay increase came from USAC administrative funds and subtracted from funds that could have potentially supported student group operations.
The vote also tied councilmember stipends to California’s minimum wage of $8 per hour. USAC President John Joanino and Cultural Affairs Commissioner Jessica Trumble said they also want the proposal to make stipends adjust annually to the consumer price index.
The consumer price index is a measure of the average change in price of a fixed list of consumer goods and services, which is used to estimate inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Roy Champawat, director of the UCLA Student Union, said he thinks it makes more sense to keep USAC stipends tied to the minimum wage, instead of changing the bylaws to tie them to the consumer price index.
“Minimum wage is the standard that has been defined in our society as the rate tied to work, whereas (the) consumer price index is a different measure,” Champawat said. “It’s a measure of inflation, which isn’t tied to work (but to the) products that we buy.”
Joanino said he thinks it is important for the stipend to be adjusted to the consumer price index, so that USAC council positions are made more accessible for students in the future if the minimum wage does not rise proportionately with inflation.
The Internal Vice President’s Office is making adjustments to the language of the proposal based on feedback from students who expressed interest in contributing to the proposal at a town hall meeting last quarter, including Joanino and Trumble, Oved said.
Nicole Fossier was one of a group of students who pushed for a bylaw amendment at the town hall meeting. Fossier is an Internal Vice President’s Office student group liaison and an executive board member of the Bruin Alliance slate, which ran two candidates unsuccessfully in the USAC elections last spring.
Fossier said she is excited the proposal is finally being introduced to the committee for review and she is satisfied with the language of the proposal.
An open letter against the stipend increase was drafted by Fossier and Taylor Bazley, an executive chair of Bruin Alliance, and supported by 17 student groups. Fossier and Bazley presented the letter to the council last quarter, asking the councilmembers to defer stipend increases until next year and pass a bylaw amendment that prevents future councils from raising their own stipends.
Fossier said she and Bazley will push for a referendum during this year’s USAC elections that would revert the councilmembers’ stipends to their original amounts if the council is unwilling to cooperate.
Initially, Joanino and Trumble were working on a similar proposal separately from the Internal Vice President’s Office, but they later decided to contribute to Oved’s effort by giving him feedback on his draft of the proposal, Trumble said.
The draft currently does not include a clause asking for stipends to be tied to the consumer price index, but Joanino said he will continue to push for the change. Oved said he will forward the finalized draft to them for feedback before he presents the proposal to the Constitutional Review Committee next week.
The Constitutional Review Committee, comprised a few USAC councilmembers, will review the bylaw amendment proposal and recommend it to the council if it wins a majority of the committee’s vote.