The Society for Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS) intends to pay volunteers for their labour, through honorarium.
In an effort to recognize the hard work graduate students put into their services without pay, the SGPS is looking to find the budget to grant members of the three main graduate committees’ honorariums in the near future.
These honorariums are only being offered for graduate committee members for this current year; however, the SGPS is looking to expand this program in the coming years.
“We really do appreciate all the work graduate and professional students do for us,” SGPS Vice President (Community) Emilia Ganslandt said in an interview with The Journal.
The committees who will be considered for honorariums during this rollout phase of the program are the International Students Affairs Standing Committee, the Soft Infrastructure Network Committee, and the Awards Committee.
Specifics about each honorarium is decided by an SGPS commissioner, based on how the honorarium can fit into their portfolio.
The honorarium program was conceptualized by the former SGPS Executive—specifically the International Commissioner —and has been passed along to the current membership.
“This is the pilot year we’ve just allocated the funds to do this and [each commissioner] working on the implementation [which] works best under their portfolio,” Ganslandt said.
The funds for the honorariums will come from existing graduate student funds through a budget rearrangement headed by the International Student Affair’s Commissioner.
“It will not increase student fees at this point; this is re-allocation of money in our budget,” Ganslandt said.
The SGPS is hoping for this budget rearrangement to be a signal to the University to start allocating funds to deserving graduate students who continue to work without pay.
“We hope that other groups and other parts of the University will consider compensating students more for their time,” Ganslandt said.
The program is currently geared towards equity-deserving graduate and professional students who have, historically, completed free labour for their graduate programs. It’s also intended to increase the accessibility of the graduate programs to international students.
The SGPS will contact students who are eligible for an honorarium to arrange payment.
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