The senate allocated $36,110 for stipends for Fiscal Year 2026. This amount was determined at the beginning of the semester in the Spring 2025 Appropriations Budget. This budget determined that 10 percent of the spring budget for the undergraduate senate would be used for stipends, the same percentage as last year.
Bala said that although she sees value in stipends, keeping the percentage of the budget the same as last year is “quite frankly, ridiculous.”
“I think they should have done more thinking when they unanimously passed that 10 percent funding rate,” Bala said. “Why are we funding at that same 10 percent rate that we've always been using when there's so many fewer positions?”
Bala also said she received guidance from the undergraduate treasurer, Andrew Forbes. Forbes said he had two recommendations for Bala: either keep the stipend amounts the same as last year or break down the full amount proportionally to each role.
Since the 10 percent amount had been previously voted on, Bala said she allocated the full amount to each position in what she believed was an equal way.
Forbes was recently elected to serve another term as the undergraduate treasurer, which is a stipended position. Forbes said he was unaware he would hold a stipended position when he gave his initial recommendations.
After Bala wrote the stipend bill, it was seen in the finance committee. Bala said the committee recommended it favorably and put it onto the consent calendar. However, someone objected to this decision before the meeting, so it was moved to the General Orders, meaning it would be heard on the senate floor.
March 18 meeting
During the meeting, Sen. Christopher McClanahan moved to suspend the rules and adopt the bill by unanimous consent, meaning there would be no debate.
When the motion was called, six senators voted against it. One of the senators who voted against the motion said they were surprised by the numbers on the stipend bill and wanted to hear the reasoning behind it.
This senator, who requested to remain anonymous out of concern for their future relationship with senate leadership, said the majority of the senate do not have a legislative background and some members were unsure of what unanimous consent meant.
“We passed this remarkable increase in money without even asking people like the speaker of the senate during the meeting whether he thought that was a worthy salary,” the senator said.
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Later in the meeting, multiple senate leaders gave speeches about the lack of discussion on the stipend bill.
There was a motion to revote, but McClanahan pointed out the loss of quorum, meaning less than half of the senators were present, so no voting could be made on legislation. This was ruled dilatory at first and then allowed to go through.
“While it is 100 percent true that we lost quorum at that time, and we should not be conducting business without quorum,” the senator said, “it really frustrated me that the person who called that and who noticed that and who's keeping track of that was also the person that called for suspension of the rules at the beginning.”
Fiore said she thought there were two main reasons for the confusion regarding the stipend bill. The first reason was that people hadn’t read the bill and assumed that individual stipends were decreasing. The second was the motion to adopt the bill by unanimous consent.
“In my experience, you don’t make a motion to adopt by unanimous consent for something that's super controversial,” Fiore said. “So when people heard that, they're like, ‘Oh, this must have overwhelming support. We'll go ahead and approve this.’”
Fiore said no concerns were brought up when the finance committee raised the stipend bill.
“I was honestly curious to see if the bill was going to be controversial, and because nobody showed up to the meeting even though they were notified of it and they had the legislation weeks in advance, I just kind of assumed that the bill wasn't very controversial,” Fiore said.
Impacts of the changes
Fiore said if these positions weren't stipended, there would be a risk of shutting out low-income students from these roles.
“It's really difficult to volunteer that much of your time and be able to have a full class schedule and then also pay for your college tuition,” Fiore said.
McClanahan also made a motion at the beginning of the meeting to reorder the agenda so that the reports of senate officers were not given at the beginning but at the end. McClanahan said this had nothing to do with the stipend bill.
However, Speaker Matthew Tweden said this also eliminated the senators' ability to speak broadly on issues beforehand. Instead, the first thing that occurred at the meeting was the vote on the stipend bill.
McClanahan said if the speeches had been at the beginning of the meeting, there still likely would have been speakers against it, although he did not believe this would have prevented the bill from passing.
“The primary reason for a lack of a floor debate on the item was simply anticipation of shenanigans,” McClanahan said. “There are ways in senate that people can screw around with things even if they're very much not a majority, see the filibuster like the real Senate, and if that is expected, it can be preempted.”
McClanahan said if the bill had not been passed during that senate meeting, the positions listed on the bill wouldn’t receive stipends the next year because the stipends cannot be altered by the new incoming senate.
He also said a senate leader made a comment before the meeting about not having quorum when it was time to vote on the stipend bill. This would have prevented the stipend bill from passing.
“If you want to abolish stipends, the way you do it is not by failing the stipends bill by causing a loss of quorum,” McClanahan said. “That is the most underhanded political thing I can think of. The way you do it is by passing a bill that says we’re not going to do this anymore.”
The new 107th Undergraduate Senate will meet for the first time on April 2, and the incoming speaker will be elected. Baruch said that McClanahan is the most likely candidate for this stipended position.
enterprisedesk@dailytarheel.com
