A finance committee meeting held on Fri., Feb. 6 led to a recommendation for the removal of stipends for all Plymouth State University media groups. The recommendation will be brought before Senate on Sun., Feb. 8, just two days after the recommendation was announced to those it would effect.
The four student organizations that would be affected by this potential change are PSU Poets and Writers, The Clock, The Conning Tower yearbook and WPCR .
Four Student Senate members sit on the Finance Committee. Former-student and Committee Chair Ezra Dalton, Trustee Gene Martin, Senator Hallie Marden and Senator Gina Pappa. Pappa is expected to succeed Dalton as finance committee chair following the Feb. 8 meeting
An email was sent out at 2:20 on Fri., approximately 45 minutes after meeting with members of The Clock regarding stipend increases, Dalton sent out an email to the heads of all on-campus media organizations that stated, “Today the Senate Finance Committee met with a student group request to increase their current stipends. After much discussion and debate the findings and recommendation of the Senate Finance Committee was to recommend to the Student Senate to vote to remove all stipends from all student organizations effective fiscal year 2010.”
Groups that are receiving stipends will continue to do so for the rest of the semester, but, should the Senate vote in favor of the committee’s recommendation, student organizations will no longer be eligible for stipends beginning in the Fall semester of 2009.
The issue of stipends and student organizations is not a new issue. In 2006 the Stipend Taskforce came to the recognition that, “a stipend is a payment meant to compensate a student for the time spent in their position that would otherwise be used for supporting themselves financially. Also, we see the stipend as most essential when the position is crucial to the operation of an organization and the duties could not be delegated.”
The taskforce-completed guidelines referring to the process of applying for stipends, as well as the recommend amount of hours spent working for a media group in relation to the stipend granted.
The taskforce then recommend the Student Senate to vote in favor of preserving stipends. Both Dalton and Martin were on the 2006 committee, which voted unanimously to keep stipends three years ago.
“We had an early finance committee meeting for The Clock to come before us,” Hallie Marden, Senior Class Representative said. “The meeting was about [The Clock’s] stipend, and from that it turned into a conversation about all the Student Orgs that have stipends and if the recommendation should be about all of them in general.”
“It wasn’t a normally scheduled finance meeting,” Marden said, “The next senate meeting is in two days and it just makes sense that we make our recommendation at the next senate meeting. It just happened to be close together.”
“I think this is ridiculous, it’s unfair, the people debating on the issue don’t get stipends and those with stipends have no say in the issue,” Adam Rourke, the General Manager of WPCR said. “We use our stipends to insure that we get quality work out of our exec. Board members, and it’s also a thank you for all their work.”
The finance committee will introduce their recommendation at the Sun. Feb. 8 meeting. After much dialog between the Student Senate and members of the media organizations on campus, the discussion was closed. The Senate will be voting on the recommendation at the Fe. 15 Senate meeting.