GSAS Student Council Ratifies Executive Board Stipend After Monthslong Push

The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Student Council ratified the language for a new stipend for its executive board at its Thursday meeting, completing a monthslong effort to pay the body’s leaders for the first time.

The stipend, which GSC president Laura E. König first proposed in February, will take effect during the 2026-27 academic year. It is funded entirely by the GSC’s existing budget, which draws from an annual fee of $35 per student.

König, a neuroscience Ph.D. candidate who is graduating this summer, said the stipend is intended to help cover personal costs for executive board members and attract competitive candidates to positions that demand significant time commitments. König described the presidency as requiring roughly 20 hours a week on average.

“It’s not supposed to be a salary by any means,” König said at the meeting. “It’s to offset personal costs.”

The stipend is calculated as a percentage of the GSC’s net annual budget rather than a fixed dollar amount — a design choice that emerged from student feedback during the proposal process. König emphasized that the stipend is based solely on each year’s revenue from the student fee and does not draw from savings or rollovers from previous years.

“The money that goes to students through conference grants or research grants or student departmental group funding should not be compromised by us having such a thing as a stipend,” König said in an interview after the meeting.

To free up budget space for the stipend without touching student funding, the GSC also adopted a new nine-year savings plan for the Ivy Plus summit — an annual gathering of graduate student leaders across Ivy-league and peer institutions that Harvard hosts every nine years, including this coming one. Previously, the GSC lacked a structured approach to saving for hosting costs, leading to lopsided budget allocations in the years immediately before each hosting cycle.

Under the new plan, the GSC will set aside up to $3,000 per year for delegate travel and registration and contribute at least 2.5 percent of its projected revenue — roughly $4,500 under the current budget of approximately $160,000 — into a hosting reserve each year. The reserve is capped at $40,000 and can only be used for Ivy Plus hosting expenses.

GSC Treasurer Shubham Choudhary, who presented the savings plan at the meeting, said the restructuring was designed to outlast any single cohort of student leaders.

“We decided to do a sustainable thing for the next nine years, even though all of us who are here are not going to be here,” Choudhary said.

The ratification vote passed with no opposition.

König described the ratification of the stipend as a final step in a multi-meeting process that began with an initial proposal, continued with an open feedback period, and culminated in a motion passed at the previous meeting. Thursday's vote formalized the constitutional language.

“This is all from students for students,” König said. “We’re kind of a student government that funds itself entirely from the student body. There’s no outside organizations, no grants, no funds that are coming from the outside.”

König, who has served two years as president, said she waited until the end of her tenure to pursue the stipend so it would not appear self-serving. She will not receive any payment under the new policy.

“I did not start this effort until now because I didn’t want it to sound like I’m trying to pay myself for this,” she said.

The meeting also featured the GSC’s annual elections for all executive board and advisory positions for the 2026-27 academic year. Current Vice President Flora S. Giordani ran unopposed for president, and current Chair of Advocacy Dorian Cole campaigned unopposed for vice president. Shubham Choudhary, the incumbent treasurer, is facing one challenger, Sawal Choudhary.

Several chair positions, including advocacy and communications, drew no candidates by the close of the in-person nominations, though members had until midnight to submit interest forms.

Graduate students will have a week to cast their votes.

—Staff writer Saron Elias can be reached at [email protected].