Distance exec to take a pay cut

The entirety of the Massey Distance Exec, well, what remains of it, is set to take a pay decrease by $5 per hour across the board. The President’s honorarium will decrease from $35 to 30 per hour, whilst the rest of the board will decrease from $30 to $25. For all you non-student exec freaks, an honorarium is a method to pay volunteers a nominal amount for their time, popular amongst sport coaches or church treasurers, or in this case, student associations. 

In 2019, a motion was proposed to raise the honorarium by an “exorbitant amount” according to co-president Jacalyn Clare. This motion failed, however in 2020, a motion was passed increasing the Presidential honorarium by $5 an hour.  

Jacalyn says, “Since then, both Co-Presidents have learned the honorarium for Massey@Distance’s board is substantially higher than any other student association we know the honoraria for. This is not something anyone on the board was ever made aware of and which was only discovered when I began questioning other associations how much their Presidents were paid as I felt we were being overpaid.” She continues, “Given how limited our funding is we feel it’s wrong for us to be paid this much when it should be used to support distance students.”  

In the meeting, the co-presidents admitted that, “Looking at the finances, things are not looking good,” and that they “can’t afford all the meetings we’re having”. The decision to decrease rates was passed unanimously, amongst the three remaining board members. Jacalyn says one board member commented that “he thought the decreased rate was the original hourly rate, so he had no concerns about the decrease at all”. Lol.