Each year, it seems a question is raised about why the student body president, vice president and finance director receive full tuition. The question is renewed every year by new students and GSB senators alike.

In the Government of the Student Body Bylaws under Chapter 14 Sections .1.1 through .1.3, it states the president shall be offered a compensation for room and board and a full tuition remission (hereafter called scholarship and included mandatory assessed fees), the finance director shall be offered compensation, scholarship and included mandatory assessed fees and the vice president shall be offered half of total compensation, half of scholarship and included mandatory assessed fees.

As these bylaws are easy to understand, it can be interpreted from these bylaws that the tuition scholarship depends on the amount of scholarship going toward the officer’s tuition; the amount of scholarship given will be used to make up the difference between the cost of tuition and what the officer already has in scholarships outside of their GSB scholarship.

On average, the president, vice president and finance director each work 40 hours a week and many other weeks longer than that. They sit through and direct what seem like a gauntlet of meetings every week. They’re often in their offices, sometimes until 2 in the morning, working on projects. Sometimes they even have to leave town for a meeting at another university or spend a week at a conference.

“We have long, weird, sporadic hours with this job,” said GSB president Jared Knight. “I would not hire someone ever for a job with this type of time conflict.”

Both finance director Arjay Vander Velden and Knight agreed that their positions were essentially a job and that if they were to have another job, it would take away time spent on performing their duties.

In addition to performing their executive duties here on campus, the trio works with the Iowa Legislature, the Iowa Board of Regents, other state universities and the governor to ensure that the voice of the student body is heard outside of Ames.

One current example is the role they are actively partaking in to get a $20 million funding increase for Iowa State through the state government.

When asked about why it was put into place in the bylaws to give scholarships to the president, vice president and finance director, Knight said that the authors of the bylaws did not want to exclude any student from serving the positions due to financial reasons and that there was basically no time for a second job to be held during an officer’s term.

While the argument is still swirling about whether or not to give these three positions scholarships, the vice president’s scholarship was reduced from full tuition to half in the past four or five years. And with budgets coming under more scrutiny, it is plausible to see a reduction in scholarships in order to cut down budgets and use resources more wisely.

“I think it might stay the same as it is for a while,” Vander Velden said. “We are one of the lowest self-paid student governments compared to other universities our size; at some universities, the student senators even receive a stipend.”