OMA Leaders Financial Compensation

The emotional labor that Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) clubs incur in their roles as student leaders has encouraged many OMA student leaders to push for financial compensation. The Student Council election debates of the 2021-2022 school year brought about schoolwide discourse on this issue, though affinity groups have been requesting financial compensation for several years.

In her 2021 Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote address, Roxane Gay ’92 said, “I think that students who serve in executive positions for all student organizations should receive stipends.”

“The endowment can afford it,” she added.

Rawson wrote in an email to The Exonian on January 19 that, “this proposal [for financial compensation] has not previously been brought to my attention. I would like to hear from OMA, the Dean of Students Office and others to understand their views on whether compensation would be appropriate, for what students in what student organizations, and how they recommend those decisions be made.”

“I know it's been brought up in StuCo, but if we're to really acknowledge where that idea came from, it's from ALES,”  Upper Janessa Vargas, co-head of the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society and La Alianza Latina, said. “There's been proposals about every four years, they've been around since 1968… the 2016 proposal is really interesting because it's the one that we were using.” 

“It would be beneficial for there to be avenues for students to be compensated for work they do as advocates for OMA clubs,” Asian Voices co-head JaQ Lai said. “Considering the school has paid positions such as library tech support, lifeguard, or game room monitor, the threshold for which students can be compensated for labor has been set at a pretty low precedent. I don’t see why students shouldn’t be compensated for the very intense and difficult work that often goes beyond what they originally committed to in the context of what their club does.”

Courtney Marshall, Associate Dean of Advising, adviser of the Afro-Latinx Exonian Society and former leader of the OMA Book Club, agreed and shared OMA club leaders’ frustrating experiences. “I always say to the students, what do you get out of it? Right? Is this OMA club leadership role adding to you in any way? Or is it a headache? And if it's a headache and it's frustration and it's irritating, that has to change.”

Requests for financial compensation have grown in response to the Academy’s attempts to address global incidents of racism, which some OMA leaders have seen as lacking. “We saw [that] with the school, [there was a ] very delayed response to the rise of anti Asian racism, primarily in the Bay Area against elderly Asian folks,” Senior Sarah Huang, co-head of Asian Voices, said in reference to a February 23 all-community email Rawson sent out to address anti-Asian violence.  “The school’s response is very late. And one of the things we raised in the meeting [with Rawson] is that students shouldn't have to ask you to make a statement for you to make a statement, because the whole point is that you're expressing your care.”

“[The email] didn't address the core of the problem. And so in order to voice that to Principal Rawson, [the co-heads] had to meet several times to go over how we were going to present what exactly was wrong to principal Rawson.” Senior Emily Kang, co-head of the Asian Voices, affirmed Huang’s stance. “If Principal Rawson then really knew how to support students and sent out an email earlier and knew not to make the mistakes that they did, we wouldn't have to go through this.”

Vargas explained that, due to the Academy’s inaction and delayed responses, student leaders within OMA had to taken on anti-racist work themselves. 

“It’s emotional labor. Ideally, no student would have to be doing this. Ideally, it would be [the] faculty, experienced sociologists, racial studies professors [doing the work], but because the school likes to take the unpaid emotional labor of students, [these responsibilities] rest on us. So for me, compensation is the bare minimum for years of taking work without giving credit, which is what Rawson did in his anti-racist update. He credited The Exonian more than the Afro-Latinx Society, [taking] language straight from [our] proposals,” Vargas mentioned.

Marshall categorized OMA’s work into people-facing and administration-facing responsibilities. “If you are the club leaders and you are...planning events...going out to meet members, doing club stuff...that face other students, that’s one thing, and that’s what clubs do. The tricky part is when those same club leaders have to turn administration-facing. And they have to turn to adult-facing. And so that’s when I step in and say, ‘well, wait a minute, what then is the role of the school?’”

Huang shared the sentiment and added that the co-heads of Asian Voices met over seven times preceding their meeting with Rawson. “We spent a lot of time writing emails, preparing notes, meeting with our advisors, and talking with [Student Council] Executive Board members. Ultimately, that’s a lot of work.”

“Affinity groups are not political spaces. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here for each other, not to correct the errors and missteps of an institution or anyone else. And the fact that we do that for the school means we should be compensated. What we’re doing now exceeds the responsibilities of what facilitators of affinity spaces should do,” Huang said. 

Kang explained her similar stance on the issue. “The reason why I’m asking for compensation is because we’re told to do a lot of emotional labor and if this school really supported students, we wouldn’t have to go through that emotional labor, but we do,” she said. “We want the school to acknowledge the fact that this isn’t something easy for us.”

A problem with the administration is that “they just don't listen” Kang added. “[To combat this], a very simple answer could be funding. Another answer could be hiring someone in the administration to better advise them since they won't listen to students.”

“I think the school could do a much better job really showing all the work that these clubs do. And not just like a one time here, let's look at OMA club, but really integrating them into the life of the school. Let families know about it, because I also run the family newsletter. Do families even know about what OMA clubs are doing?” Marshall said. “Another thing is, you know, we did this one year where we went to the people of color conference in Nashville and we took a group of students. So I think opportunities to travel, to connect with other student leaders at their schools. I think that would be fabulous.” 

Marshall further suggested giving out non-financial compensation to OMA student leaders. “I think as far as compensation, my rule is to ask people what they want. So if it's money, if it's course credit, if it's a nicer dorm room, if it's an office, right? We, as the OMA sponsored group co-heads and leaders, want a dedicated space where we can go in and we can have supplies for just those co-heads. So again, I think for compensation, you have to ask people what it is, what they want.”