Harvard GSAS Student Council President Proposes Member Stipends to Boost Engagement

The president of the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Council introduced a preliminary proposal at a Thursday meeting to provide stipends to council members in an effort to address long-standing attrition and low engagement.

Laura E. König, the president of the GSC, said the stipends would encourage high quality work and promote competitive elections — an issue that became particularly salient after the body briefly failed to elect a president in 2024. The stipends, if approved, would not be offered until the next academic year, taking effect after König’s graduation in May.

The GSC has long struggled to retain student interest to fill its 138 seats. Elections have gone uncontested in recent years, and several student members have dropped out mid-semester or left work undone, according to König. Boosting attendance at meetings has been a recurring agenda item in GSC meetings for years.

König said offering stipends would serve a dual purpose: attracting a more diverse group of students, and financially supporting international students whose visas restrict off-campus work.

The proposed stipends would allot $1,500 to the president, $1,000 each to the vice president and treasurer, and $500 each for remaining executive members on a semesterly basis. König proposed awarding the stipends in full at the end of each academic year to incentivize consistent engagement from council leaders for the entirety of their tenures.

Graduate student councils at several of Harvard’s peer institutions — including Yale University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania — have been paying their members for years, and would still outearn Harvard’s GSC student members if the proposal passed.

The Yale Graduate and Professional Student Senate offers a sliding pay scale for its top leaders, with the president receiving more than $5,000 yearly and committee chairs receiving $1,100. At Penn, executive board members are paid up to $3,000 each academic year.

During the meeting, König emphasized that the stipends would not raise student fees, which currently require GSAS students to pay $35 each academic year.

Instead, the stipends would pull $15,000 — or roughly eight percent — from the GSC’s current budget. König proposed drawing $8,000 from the operating budget and an additional $7,000 from events-allocated funds.

The GSC usually overbudgets for events, so the reallocation could be sustained by decreasing the budget for future events, which historically have produced lower turnout, according to König.

Her plan was well received when presented to roughly fifty members at the Thursday meeting. Emilia Mello, a graduate student in Art, Film, and Visual Studies, said that, if anything, the proposed stipends could be increased.

“I don’t think $500 or $1,500 are really an incentive for students with busy lives, especially older students,” said Mello, who receives a stipend as a Film Study Center Fellow.

Ari C. Sarfatis, a graduate student in the Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering program at Harvard Medical School, suggested offering non-monetary incentives, such as course credit.

The GSC will incorporate members’ feedback before voting on whether to allocate funds for the stipends during its meeting next month. If approved then, the GSC will begin the constitutional amendment process and initiate voting on the new policy’s language.

Corrections: February 6, 2026

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the body failed to elect a president in the last election. In fact, the body failed to elect a president two elections ago and only in the first cycle.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that GSAS students pay $25 in annual fees. In fact, the fee has been $35 per academic year since a GSC vote two years ago.

—Staff writer Catherine Jeon can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @cathj186.