Five-percent stipend increases effective Jan. 1

At an Oct. 29 meeting, the Educational Stipend Review Committee decided to make 5-percent increases for Student Fee Committee-funded student stipend positions effective as of Jan. 1.

The stipend committee, which is charged with reviewing the stipend policy and meets about every two years, initially discussed the possible increase at several of its 12 meetings from April to July of this year.

However, Student Activities and Leadership Programs director Aimee Shattuck said there was some confusion about whether the stipends increases would go into effect for the 2008-09 academic year or the 2009-10 academic year.

Shattuck said the meeting on Oct. 29 cleared up some issues and all the members of the committee came to a consensus on when the groups would see an increase in their stipends.

While the increases will automatically go into effect for student groups on Jan. 1, Shattuck, who was a member of the stipend committee, said the process for departments will be different.

“An agreement was made that if the departments have the money available for the 5-percent increase, it would go into effect January 1,” Shattuck said.

The SFC made a ruling on Oct. 3 to make the 5-percent stipend increases, which will be paid with reserve student fees, effective immediately.

Shattuck said the SFC’s decision did not violate any rules, but the amount of time necessary to alter the stipends became problematic for those working in Portland State’s human resources and payroll departments.

“There are some logistical issues for that many stipends,” Shattuck said. “It affects the people who process the increases in each department, as well as the HR department.”

According to Hannah Fisher, the Associated Students of Portland State University president, the human resources department requested this three-month extension because the extensive paper work and reprocessing for a mid-term change.

The SFC’s Oct. 3 decision was tabled due to the confusion surrounding the stipend policy’s language. Shattuck said the 5-percent individual stipend increases were not initially supposed to go into effect until the academic year 2009-10.

SFC Chair Aimeera Flint and ASPSU President Hannah Fisher, who were both on the stipend committee, said they had a different understanding of when the increases were supposed to take effect.

“We were under the impression it would take place in fiscal year ’08-09,” Fisher said in an interview for an Oct. 9 article. “All of a sudden there was a different policy than what we thought.”

Fisher said that Jan. 1 was an unusual time to request a stipend increase, but emphasized the immediacy of the issue.

“Our stance at ASPSU is that we feel that the student organizations on campus are the heart and soul of this university, so we feel that they deserve this increase for the work they do,” Fisher said.