Student Governing Association Student Senate passed a bill disapproving of the findings of the Joint Committee on Officer Compensation, introduced a second bill disapproving of the committee’s recommendations and passed a bill creating the Special Committee on Diversity Programming Committee reform. In addition, senators heard from Peggy Schmidt, associate dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Carson Tjelmeland, student senator and junior in chemical engineering, read the bill disapproving of JCOC’s recommendations for final action. He said the committee used inaccurate information to determine allocation chair compensation, didn’t provide an explanation for compensation to the Governmental Relations and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee Chairs and the report doesn’t provide evidence the committee reached out to past SGA officers about their duties and salaries.
Overall, the recommendation from JCOC for SGA leadership compensation called for a 17 percent decrease overall to total allocation. In some cases, it moved money from higher compensated positions to positions that are less compensated or were not compensated at all.
Creighton Glasscock, the senate-appointee to JCOC and sophomore in computer sciences, agreed with the shortcomings Tjelmeland laid out
JCOC committee member and sophomore in computer science, agreed with the shortcomings laid out by Tjelmeland.
“I will say, the only thing I’m a little mad about is that if this bill passes, we’ll have to start meeting at 7:30 a.m. again,” Glasscock said. “I’ll say that I, too, had some issues. I wasn’t quite pleased with how the report itself turned up. So I have no problem just going back, revisiting it and redoing that report. There were some parts of it that were inaccurate.”
The bill passed 52 to one.
Olivia Pruss, senior in biology, introduced the second bill disapproving of JCOC. She said she agreed with the first bill but added there were insufficient explanations for the changes and criteria rubric should be included with the next report.
Related:
SGA sees a recommended 17 percent decrease in student leader compensation
Additionally, Nathan Bothwell, speaker pro tempore and junior in political science and communication studies, introduced the bill creating the Special Committee for DPC reform. The goal of the special committee is to restructure the way the Diversity Programming Committee allocates funds.
“The Diversity Programming Committee has had a variety of host changes over the years,” Bothwell said. “I would say even in committee on Wednesday, we still had like points of question over the guidelines and things like that that we would really like like to fix moving forward. I think the special committee is the best way to do that.”
The bill passed without opposition.
Schmidt spoke about the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree offered by her college. The degree program sees a new class of approximately 112 students each fall.
The maximum amount of students in each class is 120, Schmidt said, because that is the amount the facilities can provide for.
“What you’ll find out there is probably most shocking is the cost of the DVM degree. So tuition and fees alone for a Kansas resident are about $25,000 a year,” Schmidt said. “Our non residents are currently at $55,000 a year tuition and fees and then add another $12,000 to $15,000 a year for cost of living.”
Schmidt said he average educational debt for Kansas residents is just over $128,000.
“For non residents, [it’s] just over a quarter million,” Schmidt said.
Student senate will reconvene at 7 p.m. next Thursday in the Wildcat Chambers in the K-State Student Union.
