On Jan. 20, the Carleton Student Association (CSA) Senate unanimously voted to spend $20,000 of the CSA’s budget for the 2025-2026 academic year to pay the salaries of CSA executives. The amount is similar to the amount CSA allocates to Carleton’s 10-15 most-funded clubs. Despite the unanimous nature of the vote, several CSA Senators had mixed thoughts on the vote.
The vote built on a Winter 2022 constitutional amendment that approved pay for the CSA president, vice president and treasurer. This year’s vote funded pay for the communications officer for 10 hours a week at the base rate for student workers of $13 an hour.
“I feel conflicted about how it all went down,” CSA Senator Jackson Eippert ’27 said. Eippert ultimately voted in favor of the motion, explaining that “the execs do a lot of work,” however, he was hesitant and considered that the motion should have been tabled because he, “did not hear about it until the meeting.”
The CSA Bylaws stipulate, “Senate agendas must be published at least one day prior to the Senate Meeting and posted in the Monday CSA newsletter” sent by the Communications Officer (Article II, Section 1.1.A.). The content of the CSA newsletter is further defined in the Bylaws: “This email must include the upcoming Senate agenda, last Senate meeting’s minutes, and the last Budget Committee meeting’s minutes” (CSA Bylaws, Article I, Section 1.2.C.).
The CSA Newsletter is usually published on Fridays. In Winter Term, it has only included the agenda for the next meeting once: Feb. 17. Additionally, the minutes for the Senate meetings of prior weeks have not been consistently included.
The minutes for Nov. 18, Jan. 13, Jan. 20 and Jan. 27 were not publicly available on the CSA website until Feb. 10 after the Carletonian made a formal request. The minutes from Feb. 3 were made available to the Carletonian on Feb. 12, but as of Feb. 19, they are still not available to the student body at large.
The lack of publicly available agendas and minutes is in direct violation of the first section of the CSA Constitution’s Article V: Transparency and Accountability, which reads, “Any document or record produced by the CSA Senate, including Senate Meeting agendas, minutes and recordings, shall be a matter of public record, with such exceptions as matters of the Closed Sessions” (Art. V, Sec. 1).
Eippert was also concerned about a “certain optics issue” with the vote to approve executive pay. The week prior, the Senate voted 11-2 in favor of raising the Carleton Student Activity Fee from $435 for the 2024-25 school year to $462 for the 2026-27 academic year.
In 2020 the fee was $333 and for the 2008-09 academic year, the CSA Student Activity Fee was $201. In 1930, the year where CSA was established, the annual fee was 50 cents or $9.45 accounting for inflation.
Similar to previous meetings, the Jan. 13 agenda was not made available to the public prior to the meeting, once again violating the Bylaws (Bylaws; Art. I, Sec. 1.2.C) In that meeting, Treasurer Jamie Klein ’25 proposed increasing the activity fee by 6.21%, citing that the figure was recommended by the CSA Budget Committee.
The new CSA Activity Fee rate was first considered in the Jan. 8 Budget Committee meeting. In the still unpublished minutes of the meeting, Klein cited the increase as an “attempt to bring down the deficit to around 0.”
In the minutes of the Jan. 13 meeting, Eippert estimated that the raised fee would bring “about $60,000 more in funding from this year to next year.”
Because CSA does not receive external funding, one-third of the approximately $60,000 of additional income generated by the raised Activity Fee levied on the student body would go towards paying executives.
While CSA is a representative body, many students are unaware of the topics and decisions being considered by the CSA Senate.
“I only found out very recently, mostly because I knew people,” Caroline Zhou ’27 said. Zhou’s experience is common: Through the Jan. 8 Budget Committee meeting, the raising of the Student Activity Fee, and the Jan.20 meeting on executive pay, many students have been unaware of the CSA Senate’s decisions.
“I don’t think anyone outside of CSA has come during my time [on CSA],” Floyd said.
Zhou said that she understands why students are so disengaged from CSA. “I had actually wanted to join CSA at the beginning of last year, as a freshman, starry-eyed, [I] wanted to join everything,” Zhou said. “I went into a meeting, and it felt very awkward. It just felt like I was not supposed to be there. And from when I went in, all eyes were on me. They looked at me, like, ‘What is she doing here?’ I feel like it’s maybe more just for people who have positions for them to kind of discuss what they have to do.”
This perception is unhelpful according to Class Representative Talia Marash ’25 said, “Accountability looks like consistent communication with the student body.”
“I would really like it if we could have more students that weren’t on the board have their opinions be heard,” Zhou said. “If there were more, checks on executive decisions because they just vote on things about themselves, and they can just do it because — I mean — who’s going to go and stop them?”
The CSA Budget Committee, chaired by the treasurer, is charged with dispensing over $900,000 in funding to Carleton clubs and campus events. As part of that responsibility, the treasurer is obligated by both the bylaws and constitution to produce “a statement detailing the financial status of the CSA” at the end of Spring Term and Winter Term (Constitution, Art. V, Sec. 3.4). Only one report on Spring Allocations was published in fall 2024.
Similarly, the CSA president, in cooperation with the other executives, is required to compose an Executive Mid-Tenure Report published Fall Term and an Annual Executive Summary published at the end of their tenure. (Constitution, Art. V, Sec 3.1). Despite this mandate, the CSA presidents have not published these documents for several years. The most recent of these documents available on the CSA website is from the 2019-2020 academic year.
Beyond mandating certain key documents be shared with the student body, the constitution and Bylaws also obligate Class Representatives to, “hold biweekly office hours of at least one hour per session.” (Bylaws; Art. I, Sec. 1.4.D). To the Carletonian’s knowledge, no class representative regularly holds these sorts of sessions or makes information about these sessions widely available.
The Communications Officer is responsible for publishing the weekly CSA Newsletter and “disseminat[ing] information about CSA initiatives and activity via social media.” (Constitution, Art II, Sec. 2.2). There are only two posts dated between spring 2024 and the present currently posted on the official CSA Instagram page.
The CSA Secretary is already paid eight hours a week for their work. Beyond operating the campus announcement system, the secretary is charged with taking the minutes and publishing them online for both CSA Senate meetings and Budget Committee meetings (Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 2.1.4; Bylaws Art. I, Sec. 1.3). Many Senate minutes from Winter Term were not available prior to the Carletonian’s request, and only a fraction of Budget Committee minutes are available on the CSA website.
Most CSA Senators contend that executive pay is a mechanism to further accountability among the executives. Communications Officer George Lefkowicz ’25 said it would enable “more focus on both initiatives that they have for CSA and really dedicate that time.”
Some believe that executive pay will increase contestation and competition, therefore generating qualified candidates and directing more attention to CSA. Secretary Eli Floyd shared that he believes that the implementation of executive pay means, “more people are running, more people are voting.”
CSA Vice President Anoushka Mallik ’25 supported the move towards implementing executive pay on the grounds it alleviates “financial barriers to taking on this position.” She predicted executive pay would instill a “higher sense” of accountability. Mallik expected “some sort of kind of management where … if you’re getting paid to do these things, you are required … to really make sure that you are actually fulfilling your duties as an executive.”
In the Feb. 3 Senate meeting, Mallik, CSA President Kaori Hirano ’25 and the other executives proposed three amendments which the student body will vote on next weekend. Two of these amendments, in part, propose to better effectuate executive pay as well as increase accountability and efficacy.
The first proposed amendment, if passed, ensures that future elections will be held in the spring, so Senators would serve from Fall Term to Spring Term of the same academic year. Mallik cited executive pay as “the main reason for changing the tenure.”
Another reason for proposing this amendment is to increase the efficacy of the treasurer’s spring allocations, which will now be done after the treasurer has had multiple terms to become familiar with the role. Spring allocations currently happen in the middle of the treasurer’s first term in the role.
Mallik also explained it will help implement “a new policy with [the] Governance Committee where you’ll review all of the clubs and make sure their constitutions are active.”
The second proposed amendment updates the responsibilities associated with executive positions. Because execs will be paid the same amount, the amendment aims to redistribute responsibility and clarify the obligations and expectations of each role. The clear job descriptions intend to increase efficacy and accountability.
“Payment essentially ensures accountability and makes the executive positions more accountable, ” said Nathan Riel-Elness, who is the associate director of SAO and an advisor to CSA, according to the minutes of the Jan. 20th Senate meeting where executive pay was funded.
When asked if he had the power to discipline a paid CSA executive for negligence, he assured the Carletonian that he, as their supervisor, “would have to approve [their] hours,” but, in most instances, he would refer disciplinary action to the CSA Senate.
There are three disciplinary options that are described in the CSA Constitution and Bylaws: Recall, censure and impeachment. Recall was added to the CSA Constitution in 2020 and requires 10% of the student body to sign a petition (Art. VI, Sec. 2).
The grounds for censure are “misconduct, including but not limited to, violations of the Bylaws, ethical breaches or actions that significantly undermine the integrity or reputation of the Senate” (Bylaws; Art. VI, Sec. 2.1). To the Carletonian’s knowledge, it has never been used.
With the exception of one invalid motion for self-impeachment in 2023, there have not been any impeachment proceedings since 2016. Prior to that, there were 30 impeachment hearings between 1999 and 2016. Most of these hearings were entered into automatically because of a Senator’s poor attendance per the CSA Constitution (Art. VI, Sec. 1). Instead, the CSA Senate has decided not to enforce that specific clause.
When asked about her thoughts on what had changed in CSA culture over the last 10 years, Dean of Students Carolyn Livingston said, “Things happen. And for some people, more things happen than not. I try to send the message that before we get to an impeachment hearing, you maybe let somebody leave gracefully. You let them resign versus impeachment because it’s not necessarily a good marker.” Many Senators echoed the sentiment of compassion. Lefkowicz noted that “people have resigned from the senate during my tenure.”
Floyd reasoned that the Senate’s priority of, “operational efficiency over grandstanding” is why Senators are not threatened with censure or impeachment. The impeachment and censure processes are seen as too long and arduous. Instead he and President Hirano send reminder or warning texts and emails. Mallik corroborated that “warnings work pretty well.”
Floyd cited the prioritization of other Secretarial duties such as attending meetings, editing and managing the campus announcements system as taking up the bulk of his paid eight hours as well as difficulties with WordPress for the sometimes late Senate minutes.
Mallik said she felt that the disagreement between the constitution and CSA’s current practices should be addressed, such as the mid-tenure and annual executive reports, which haven’t been published in the last few years and are still included in the revised job description of the president. Mallik said, “I think it’s something that the next administration will really have to have to think about.”
Similarly, when posed a question about potentially changing the disciplinary procedures to reflect the current system of verbal and written warnings, Lefkowicz answered, “It would be interesting to look at those accountability measures.”
