WSA Votes for Increased Senator Pay to Match Inflation, No Student Referendum Sought

Among other issues, a staple debate at the Wesleyan Student Assembly’s (WSA) General Assemblies (GA) this past month has been whether a raise in senator pay to match inflation should be put to student referendum. This quandary comes amidst long discussions of two other propositions: Should student representatives continue to be compensated and should their stipends be increased to match inflation? 

Senators answered all three questions in the last two GAs. 

On Sunday, April 26, the WSA passed a long-debated amendment that increases WSA senator and leadership stipends to match inflation with majority support from senators. Senators Nicolas Millan ’27 and Casey Dunning-Sorey ’28 voted against the bill, and five representatives abstained from voting. 

The amendment will increase senator compensation from $850 to $930 and leadership compensation from $1300 to $1430, as matched to the Consumer Price Index calculated inflation rate which stands around 8%. The bill states that any further increases to senator pay should be put to student referendum, but only if the amount exceeds keeping pace with inflation. 

This amendment’s passage follows another bill that passed on Sunday, April 19, to continue senator stipend pay for the coming years, while reapportioning funds for compensation and enforcing a stricter attendance policy. Elana Hartley ’28 and Zev Brown ’28 abstained from voting on pay continuation, and Millan was the only senator to vote no on that bill. 

“I think there is also something to be said about we have higher retention rates [after instituting pay], which means we have higher institutional knowledge, which means we are a more effective functioning party now than we had been in the past,” Student Budget Committee Chair Zain Punjwani ’26 said.

The two amendments come as a 2023 pilot program, which was backed by a student referendum and approved semesterly stipends for all student representatives on the WSA, was slated to expire at the end of 2026. Before the pilot program, only senators eligible for federal work-study were compensated under a program started in 2015. 

“If you think that there is some sort of republican reason—where we are the representatives and we get to make that decision, fine, but you have to consider another thing, this is a conflict of interest,” Millan, one of the sole opponents of the bill, said during the GA. “If the WSA were a club that were requesting this in front of the [Student Budget Committee (SBC)], everyone on the SBC would have to recuse themselves from the vote.”

Millan told The Argus he is likely to resign following the bill’s passage.

Considering a Student Body Referendum

The GA conducted a blind straw poll earlier this month on whether the bill raising senator stipends should include language on the student referendum at all, which resulted in a 13–11 decision in favor of its inclusion. 

The next GA saw another blind straw poll to decide whether the bill should be put to the student body to approve any pay raise or only if the increase exceeded inflation. The latter option was favored.

“I actually do agree that WSA senators should be paid,” Dunning-Sorey said. “I think that the main point of the increase was to match inflation, which I do [also] agree with. My only worry, though, was that I don’t think that had adequately been adjudicated by the student body.” 

A proponent of putting any stipend increase to student vote, Dunning-Sorey clarified his interpretation of the 2022 program bylaws, which states that the current WSA “shall vote to continue or adjust the stipend program through constitutional amendment” when the pilot program expires.

“I thought that there wasn’t adequate precedent [in those bylaws] to have an internal vote making that decision of raising it to inflation,” Dunning-Sorey said. “I didn’t think that the previous amendment said that we had that power.”

Proponents of the bill disagreed. 

“The literal bylaws…gives the WSA the power to decide by constitution, which is what this is,” Punjwani said. 

In addition to Millan and Dunning-Sorey’s dissent, five representatives—Vice President Judy Liu ’26, Saul Ferholt-Khan ’27, Angelise Benimadho ’29, Makayla Kidd ’29, and UsZee McKoy ’29 abstained from voting. 

“It is a conflict of interest to give yourself a raise,” Millan said. “So, I think the people who recuse themselves, the people who abstained, I applaud them, and it’s a good idea. On the other hand, there’s also this political aspect…this looks bad, and me, personally, I would not want to be associated with this decision.”

The Split Amendments

The debate first concerned one proposed amendment that called for both extending the stipend program and increasing the amount student representatives were paid. After undergoing weeks of feedback, proponents split the amendment into two sections.

“Interest was there in splitting the bills, and we really looked at the language and found [that] the part that was most controversial was the increase,” Punjwani said, noting that the amendment increasing senator pay still had majority support. “So that’s why we separated the increase from everything else.”

Currently the attendance policy is such that accruing six total absences across the GA and committee meetings exposes a senator to impeachment. The new attendance policy allows for only three unexcused absences across GA and committee meetings before WSA leadership initiates impeachment proceedings against a senator, unless they resign.

Showing You the Money

Currently senator pay accounts for the three hours they spend at GA every Sunday, but does not account for time spent at committee meetings or other administrative tasks.

Senator pay so far has drawn from two major sources: the Student Activities Fee (SAF), a mandatory $390 charge that is part of tuition, and remaining SAF funds arising from a COVID-19 budget surplus when clubs requested fewer funds for activities.

The SAF was last raised via WSA amendment in November 2025 to match rising inflation, increasing 4% to what will be $405 for the 2026–27 academic year. According to the SBC, this fee raise did not affect financial aid recipients.

The amendment extending senator compensation reapportions funds to draws half the funds from the SAF and the other half from the WSA’s endowment; the latter, worth $1.1 million at the end of the last academic year, has not been touched since its formation in 2008.

Prior to this, three-quarters of the senators’ funding was drawn from the SAF, and the COVID-19 surplus paid for the rest. The stipend was first established in the Spring 2023 semester by pulling entirely from the COVID-19 surplus—now, the surplus has been reinvested into the endowment. 

Proponents argued that this reapportionment means lesser strain on student pockets via the SAF.

However, Millan has held that there is no real distinction between the WSA’s endowment, the SAF, and the budget surplus, stating that “it’s all student money.”

Punjwani noted that unlike most campus jobs, which account for inflation within minimum wage, the senator stipend structure does not account for rising costs.

“There’s this notion that we should get paid a wage, and that that wage rises with inflation, but at the same time, we get paid less than minimum wage,” Millan said. “So I don’t really see why our stipend should increase with inflation. I think it puts additional strain on the budget. If we’re already compensated money for what we all agree to be volunteer work, then I don’t see why it matters that [cost of living] increases by 5% every year.”

It Takes a Village 

Regarding student outreach on the amendment, the WSA has sent out weekly emails, social media posts, and student drop-in hours tailored to discussion on the stipend increase. Student participation, however, hasn’t been vigorous, according to Punjwani.

“To me, it’s telling people didn’t come to the office at drop-in hours to complain,” Punjwani said. “They came to support and it takes much more to go somewhere and say you’re in support of something than it is to go and say you’re opposed to it. The fact that the only two non-WSA people that came to drop in hours were both in favor of extending compensation and in favor of increasing compensation, to me, is very telling.”

Millan argued that outreach or student apathy doesn’t indicate student support for the raise. 

“I think it’s easy to tell people things and have them change their minds when they’re not that well informed,” Millan said. “I think that the WSA has done an incredibly poor job at keeping people informed. You can send people a billion emails per day. They’re not going to read them. You can host office hours in a forgotten corner of campus. They’re not going to go to them. That’s obviously not a substantial argument for a pay rise. That doesn’t indicate student support.”

The President Opines

On Sunday, April 19, President Michael Roth ’78 was present at the GA for a question-and-answer session and answered a question on his take on the amendment.

“I think it’s a terrible idea—it’s not really my business, but you did ask,” Roth said. “The biggest problem you have is that people don’t think of you as representing them. The worst thing you could do is give yourselves a raise. It’s just the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Punjwani said he and his fellow proponents did not pay mind to Roth’s comment, noting instead that senators who benefit from compensation the most have fought for it over the past decade. 

“I think President Roth was correct when he said it’s not his place to say, and I think he should have stuck to that and not said anything,” Punjwani said.

Let’s Talk Equity

“If you look at where the support lies for the bill and where it doesn’t lie for the bill, you can see very clear breakdown—that it is FGLI [First-Generation Low-Income] students of color that fought for compensation in 2015, that fought for it in 2023, and are now fighting for it in 2026,” Punjwani said. “We see the value and we see the harm in only incentivizing our labor, which is why we think everyone’s labor should be compensated.”

Proponents argue that while the increased pay affects everyone differently, all senators are ultimately recipients of the stipend. 

“This amendment supports all senators, and I think that is the point,” Equity and Inclusion Committee Chair Katie Williams ’28 said. “As a work-study student who has held at least three campus jobs simultaneously since October of my first year, I have never relied on my WSA stipend as a sole source of income. This is not about dependency; it is about recognizing that student labor has value.”

Williams elaborated that she thinks arguing for only FGLI senator compensation fails to recognize the work done by the wider WSA. 

“An inflation adjustment is a universal correction; it restores the real value of compensation that was already approved for all senators, regardless of income background,” Williams said. “The justification does not need to be made in FGLI terms to be legitimate…. A stipend is not a wage; it signals commitment to shared service, and that signal loses meaning when it is distributed unequally among people doing equivalent work.” 

Millan, who believes only FGLI and work-study senators should be paid, disagrees about the purpose of compensation for senators. 

“I just don’t think this argument should be spinning in circles like this,” Senator Raiza Goel ’28 said. “We have not gotten anything productive [done] and just missed out on so much time solving other actual campus issues that are not about our own pain.”

Raiza Goel is Managing Editor for The Argus.

Janhavi Munde can be reached at jmunde@wesleyan.edu. 

Peyton De Winter can be reached at pdewinter@wesleyan.edu.