ASSU senators defend stipends for student government

Following the 26th Undergraduate Senate’s (UGS) and Graduate Student Council’s (GSC) final meetings and the election of new student representatives, Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) members received stipends from their student government positions.

This year, stipends for Graduate Student Council (GSC) counselors ranged from $1,400 to $3,200, stipends for Undergraduate Senate (UGS) senators ranged from $1,900 to $4,000 and stipends for ASSU Executive members ranged from $900 to $7,500, according to Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) Chief Executive Officer Jas Espinosa ’18 M.A. ’19. Documents obtained by The Daily confirm Espinosa’s estimation for UGS stipends.

Espinosa shared that each ASSU branch receives a budget every year, which they then allocate to stipends and discretionary spending. The branches calculate stipends based on the number of hours spent per role per week, Espinosa said.

26th UGS co-chair Gordon Allen ’26 told The Daily that he, alongside his former UGS co-chair Ivy Chen ’26 M.A. ’27, implemented an accountability point system at the beginning of the 26th UGS term. 

“We have a workstream tracker and everything a senator does is documented. They get certain points allocated at the end of each quarter, and then it determines how the stipend is calculated,” Allen said. “It’s not arbitrary, and we completely restructured the stipend.”

Allen urged students to consider the “behind-the-scenes work” of the UGS. “I can understand why people want transparency, but also I just hope people recognize that the work that’s done behind the scenes justifies [stipends],” he said. 

“Your average senator will put in at least eight hours of work [a week], and that’s just meetings and official business,” Allen said. “That does not include the work that is done to create the initiatives.”

Last year’s GSC co-chair Emmit Pert, a fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. student, echoed that ASSU work is “underpaid” and “stressful.”

“They’re rewarding jobs, but they’re not fun day to day. There are many times when I’m like, ‘I don’t want to deal with this angry email from a constituent,’ or ‘I don’t really want to go to this meeting, but it’s the right thing to do,’” Pert said. “There are many ways all of us could be making more money in less time.”

Espinosa explained that, because senators work disproportionately more hours than they are compensated for, the pay serves as a stipend not a salary. 

“It really is meant to be a stipend and a form of gratitude compensation because they’re not getting paid what would be considered an actual wage, meaning it has to meet minimum wage standards,” Espinosa said.

Espinosa, who served as an ASSU senator as a student at Stanford, underscored the importance of compensation for senators in allowing a diverse set of students to serve on the ASSU. 

“When I was a student, I was first-generation, low-income, and time on the senate was time that I couldn’t [spend] on a job where I could actually earn income,” Espinosa said. “So, it’s meant to be just an accessibility factor so more diverse students can be represented.” 

Pert highlighted the low per-student costs of stipends for senators. “The total cost for an average student, for all of our budgets combined, is $3 to $5. And yes, it’s true that our impacts are also very diffused, but I think if you were like, ‘hey, everybody chip in three dollars — less than a coffee — so that there can be somebody to contact if your housing is really going wrong’… it’s clearly worthwhile,” he said.

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