greybeta | Faith restored in student government

Sometimes, you don't always introduce a bill to get it passed. Rather, you introduce a bill to put an issue on the minds of your fellow senators.

One issue that I've always thought about is the dichotomy of my student government. Our executives and cabinet get paid, but our senators do not. One reason is that we have many more senators (anywhere from twenty to thirty senators) as compared to five executives and nine executive directors on our Cabinet. I think it's fine to give some compensation for doing good work, but I'm a practical man. A T-shirt or jacket is a nice gesture for the hard work I put in as a student senator, but I'd rather have some money to spend how I wish.

Last year, I introduced a bill to get senators paid but it got defeated. This year, I reintroduced a bill to get senators paid, but it got defeated 8-9-2. So, two weeks later, I reintroduced the bill again, much to the chagrin of my fellow senators. I didn't feel the question had been adequately answered, and I was going to keep coming back until people answered.

Finally, last night, people started talking. Sheesh, I have to threaten them with bringing this bill back again and again to get their true opinions. They didn't feel like senators should get paid because those who are in student government should do the work they do because they want to do it. I was of a different opinion, that a six fifty a week isn't really going to change the intrinisic value of being a senator.

The stipend bill got decisively defeated 4-13-0, so I won't be bringing it back up for now. We have an influx of new senators and there are other pressing concerns.

My faith has been restored in that there are still people in my student government who are there because they want to be there. But there's only so much you can ask of people who do things for free.