{shortcode-9ef281bc5a6dd32c9426d4412a679c0ca096661d}

Graduate student government leaders at Harvard have started to question why their positions don’t come with compensation — unlike some of their counterparts elsewhere in the Ivy League.

At schools including Yale University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania, graduate student government leaders receive stipends, which can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars per year.

The subject of pay came up at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Council’s most recent meeting on Nov. 6. GSC president Laura E. König presented on her visit to the Ivy+ Summit, a conference of graduate student government leaders across all eight Ivy League schools and the University of Chicago.

König attended the summit, which was held in late October at Brown University this year, with Harvard Graduate Council president Bradley Canales and vice president Cynthia J. Alvarado, who lead the University-wide graduate student government.

The delegation included GSC president Laura E. König and vice president Flora Giordani along with Harvard Graduate Council president Brad Canales and vice president Cynthia J. Alvarado.

König said that when she learned at the summit that student leaders elsewhere are paid, she thought the topic was worth revisiting. She estimated that her GSC role amounts to “about an average 20 hours of free labor every week, and I’m doing this as a volunteer.”

The issue, König said, was “close to heart.”

“We do a lot of administrative work for the school, so it would be nice to have that honored in some way,” she said, noting that pay could be especially helpful for international students whose visas do not allow them to work off campus.

The GSC has struggled to recruit members among a student body that is often unaware of the council or simply too busy to join. In recent months, the GSC has considered strengthening attendance requirements — and König mused at last month’s meeting that stipends could also be a useful recruitment tool, as well as an accountability mechanism.

“Other schools actually get their student leaders paid, and that ensures that they have highly motivated student leaders,” König said. “If they don’t do their job, they don’t get paid.”

At other schools, stipends are typically allocated through student governments’ budgets, though some are paid directly from university funds.

Members of the executive board of the Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate — which, like the HGC, is a university-wide organization of graduate student representatives — receive stipends. The Yale GPSS president earns $5,610 a year, the vice president earns $3,850, and the secretary and treasurer earn $1980 each; committee chairs are compensated with $1,100 a year.

The student council for Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate Student Assembly, also allocates funding for stipends for its officers. The chair receives a designated fellowship, and remaining funds from the compensation budget are distributed among officers “according to the importance and workload of each position,” GSA treasurer Chin Yuan Ong wrote in an email.

At Penn, members of the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly executive board are paid stipends of up to $3,000 per academic year. The GAPSA’s budget is drawn from general fees paid by all graduate students at Penn, which the university distributes to non-instructional student support services.

Columbia’s Arts and Sciences Graduate Council also pays members of its steering committee — the council allocated a total of $15,500 for steering committee stipends in the 2023-24 academic year, according to a budget posted online.

Even at schools where student government leaders get paid, the stipends don’t necessarily stack up with the hours they put in. Saman Haddad, the Yale GPSS president, estimated that he works between 15 and 20 hours a week on average — meaning his stipend works out to roughly $5 an hour.

But it’s not just at Harvard that unpaid student government leaders see the appeal of pay, even if it’s low. Jenny Ga0 — the vice president of the Columbia Engineering Graduate Student Council, whose officers are uncompensated — said she wasn’t deterred by the lack of pay, but would see a stipend as a benefit.

“As an underpaid Ph.D. student I would love compensation for the hours I put into this gig,” Gao said. “I also do it because I enjoy it to some extent, and I find it helpful for my career growth.”

Haddad wrote in an email that he would back a push for graduate student government pay at Harvard.

“We strongly believe in fair and adequate compensation for student leaders, particularly given the significant time, emotional investment, and administrative burden the work entail,” he wrote. “We stand in full support of our peers at Harvard, where the work has been both demanding and emotionally taxing.”

—Staff writer Ravelska Lafalaise can be reached at ravelska.lafalaise@thecrimson.com.
—Staff writer Tammy S. Lee can be reached at tammy.lee@thecrimson.com.