Two weeks after Student Senate demanded to increase the minimum wage to $15 for student workers, there is still no clear plan to make that happen.
Ohio University Student Senate still wants the university to make drastic institutional changes, such as a $15 minimum wage for student workers, but senate members don’t know how university officials would make that happen.
Senate Vice President Caitlyn McDaniel said she is trying to find someone who understands the university’s budget and is not willing to keep “administrators’ wages high and student worker wages low.”
Top university budget coordinators John Day, associate provost for Academic Budget and Planning, and Chad Mitchell, OU’s budget director, said they have not been contacted by senate members to explain how the university’s budgeting process works.
McDaniel called comments from Stephen Golding, OU’s vice president for Finance and Administration, in a previous Post article, “misleading” when he said increasing student wages to $15 “could have a budgetary impact and require a tuition increase to cover the cost of the wage increase.”
McDaniel said that dining hall workers’ compensation is not covered by tuition, but from dining hall revenue. Dining hall workers make up the plurality of student workers — more than 1,500 — making minimum wage at OU, according to a previous Post article.
In the 2014-15 fiscal year, Culinary Services, which operates OU’s dining halls, brought in $12.5 million more than it needed, according to university budget records.
McDaniel suggested looking into the efficiency of dining hall operations to observe wastefulness and the costs expended to allow for a pay increase for the workers.
Golding said in an email he is concerned an increase in student wages will have a substantial impact on OU’s budget.
“We have three choices as to how to cover these new costs — we can cut programs, reduce the number of available opportunities or increase these charges,” Golding said.
He added that an “unintended consequence” that has yet to be discussed is that available financial aid would also be impacted with the adjustment of college and departmental budgets.
McDaniel called for the need “to point at the salaries of the individuals who are in the administration,” noting that the top two highest paid administrators are both coaches, with salaries paid by student tuition.
The university says it is impossible to say exactly where student tuition dollars go, as all the university’s revenue, including state funds and other dollars, are spent out of one central pot.
Head mens’ basketball coach Saul Phillips earns a salary of $550,000 annually and head football coach Frank Solich makes $488,880 a year. Solich saw a 29 percent salary increase this year.
McDaniel suggested a possible pay ceiling of $200,000 for all administrators to allow room in the university’s budget for student wage increases.
While McDaniel does not yet have any plans to implement senate’s demands, she said the bigger concern is how universities like OU are starting to operate “more like private corporations” where “students are consumers and degrees are products.”
“A lot of student workers won’t complain about low wages because they don’t have many other options, probably because they do not have the time to commit to a full time job,” she said.
@ALISA_WARREN
AW120713@ohio.edu
