Each year, the five members of the Congress of the South 40 Executive Board receive a subsidy for their housing equivalent to the cost of a traditional double and, after the Residential College Round, receive first choice of rooms on the 40. We acknowledge the need for priority housing for these Executive Board members because, as a rule, they need a place to live on the 40. But we object to their receiving a subsidy for living on the 40, both because comparable positions elsewhere in the school do not receive such compensation and because a subsidy is unnecessary to accomplish the goal of having a spot for the Executive Board members on the 40.
First of all, the comparable group on campus, Student Union, in Article VII of its Constitution has stated thus: “No member of the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches of the Student Union, defined as members of the Executive Council, members of the Constitutional Council and the elected representatives of the student body, will receive any type of monetary compensation, salary or otherwise, from the Student Union budget for their duties of those Executive, Legislative, or Judicial branches.” Student Union’s responsibilities comprise of the representation of all undergraduate students, support of all registered student groups and the planning of events that encompass the entire campus.
The responsibilities of the Congress of the South 40 are considerably less in scope. The Congress is responsible for the interests of students on the South 40 through the College Councils, support of events for South 40 residents, and generally making the South 40 a cohesive and engaged community. We admit that this is still a tough job; Harrison Suárez, speaker of the Congress of the South 40, has calculated that each member of the Executive Board spends 25 to 40 hours on average each week in fulfillment of their responsibilities. But that Student Union has responsibilities to a much larger number of students and wider scope of activities while still not receiving any kind of compensation indicates that the Congress of the South 40 executives could do without it as well.
It can be argued that though priority housing choice guarantees the Executive Board members a spot on the South 40, the subsidy is necessary to compensate them for having to live there over the more inexpensive living spaces off-campus. We respond that if a person has run for and been elected to the Executive Board of the Congress of the South 40, they surely should want to live on the 40 anyway-their position is not stopping them from moving off-campus. Though, yes, off-campus housing would be cheaper, inherent in standing on the Congress of the South 40 Executive Board should be a love for the South 40 and a desire to live and serve there. The members, presumably, want to live there whether they are in a Congress of the South 40 position or not. If they need incentives to stay on the South 40 when their very job is to make it a better place, they are not the type of people South 40 residents want in these positions.
The subsidy for housing for Congress of the South 40 Executive Board members should be eliminated. For a member of the Executive Board, off-campus housing should not have been an option anyway and Student Union, another very hard-working group on campus, receives no compensation for their efforts. This unnecessary expenditure of money should be avoided.