ksaleaks

The KSA’s latest financial figures reveal a troubling picture. According to the December 2024 draft budget, the student association ran a deficit of roughly $674,000 for the year. Multiple expense lines blew past their budgets, contributing to this shortfall.

Key examples include:

• Legal & Professional Fees: The KSA spent $382,051 on legal and professional services, exceeding the budgeted $230,000 by over $152,000​. In fact, the KSA’s legal expenses in 2024 alone were higher than its total legal spending from 2019 through 2022 combined​. This suggests extraordinary (and costly) legal matters occurring behind the scenes. Why? No transparency has ever been provided on this.
• Events: The student union spent $265,249 on events, overshooting the allotted $100,000 by $165,249. For instance, a single Welcome Week event in Sept 2024 cost over $31,000 – about $10,000 more than planned.

In short, 2024 saw the KSA overspend on lawyers and events while struggling to control costs in operations. These financial troubles drained reserves and led to the significant deficit now facing the student association​.

Council Votes Itself a Hefty Pay Hike

One would expect belt-tightening in a time of deficit. Instead, the KSA council (which includes the student executive board) chose to substantially increase their own salaries and meeting payments in March 2025. At a March 21 council meeting, with the 2024 audited financial statements on the table, the council approved a suite of pay raises for themselves​:

• Executive Committee Pay: Effective April 1, each KSA executive will be paid $24.03 per hour, up from a flat biweekly stipend of $1,592.80​. With executives expected to work 80–90 hours per two-week period, this means up to $2,162.70 biweekly, a 36% increase in pay (roughly $56,230 per year before perks)​. Do executives release details of exactly what they work on that justifies them to such pay? Of course they haven’t.
• “Associate President” Honorarium: The KSA’s Associate President (a position in the KSA governance structure that was simply made up in recent years) will now receive $12,000 per semester, up from $9,000 (which itself was set just last September)​. This is a 33% jump in less than a year.
• Meeting Honoraria: All KSA Council members – including non-executive representatives – will get more money for attending meetings. Honorarium for attending a council or committee meeting was raised from $100 to $125 per meeting (a 25% increase). Committee chairpersons now get $175 per meeting (up from $150), and even student-at-large committee reps saw their stipend double from $50 to $100​. Notably, these stipends had already been increased once on April 1, 2024; the council has now given itself another raise just one year later​. No transparency has been ever given on why our representatives deserve such steady increases.

In plain terms, the student fees that fund the KSA will now be paying significantly more into the pockets of the very people who control those funds. An executive on the KSA can now make over $56k/year from salary alone, not counting additional meeting payments and a tuition reimbursement perk for six credits per semester​.