After adding just one amendment to the Associated Students of Madison’s internal budget, committee chairs unanimously approved it Tuesday night and passed it off to Student Council for further review.
The amendment came from Shared Governance Chair Deena Whitwam about decreasing pay for her own position.
Whitwam currently has a maximum workload of 20 hours per week, but she said this is too many hours for the amount of time her work takes her.
“That’s too many hours. I can’t fill it,” Whitwam said. “Therefore, it’s not changing the job description at all. It’s just making it a more reasonable number. I will not earn all of the money that’s allocated to me because I simply do not have that much work to do.”
Whitwam shares some of the heavy administrative work with a graduate student hired to do more of the heavy administrative tasks — but because the work is divided between the two, Whitwam said she thought the overestimation of hours came from ASM’s overall switch last year from stipend pay to hourly.
Shared Governance Campaign Director Jacqueline Beaulieu vocalized her support for the amendment.
“I can speak to how hard Deena has been working and if she’s not getting 20 hours, I think we should trust her on this,” Beaulieu said. “So I would encourage everyone to vote in favor of her amendment.”
The budget originally slated $7,452 for the shared governance chair’s pay, but after the amendment, it will decrease to $6,334.70. Instead of a maximum of 20 hours per week, the Shared Governance Chair can now work up to 17 hours per week.
