The Student Activities Council is in the process of approving scholarship stipends for its four executive board members.

The proposal includes a $500 stipend per semester for the SAC president, and a $250 stipend per semester for the three vice presidents of SAC including the vice president of programing, the vice president of marketing and the vice president of membership.

The stipends have been approved by the executive board and the general body of SAC but will have to wait until the fall to get approval from Student Government Association.

"It's just to help compensate because we are trying to make SAC a well-known organization on campus," incoming SAC president Ben Mulholland said. "So we are now trying to require that the president and three vice presidents hold office hours every week in the SAC office in the [Center for Student Involvement in the University Center] where the door will be open for all students and employees of the campus who have questions or need something done."

Mulholland, who was elected earlier this month, added that the stipends wouldn't be given until the end of each semester to ensure that each executive board member does all that is tasked to them.

"If the bill is approved, it will require the president and vice presidents to have office hours, which will give SAC a more professional view in the public's eye and it will allow for the students to come and voice their opinions about the organization and help them with any changes in the future," Mulholland said. "I think it's a good thing, and I hope that it gets approved."

The proposal will require the president to schedule a minimum four office hours a week, while each vice president will schedule two hours a week.

"Other universities have similar programs," Mulholland said. "SIU-Carbondale does it, Murray State does it and Missouri State University does it. Those are the three that we saw all give scholarships to their SAC exec."

"Others schools have done this as well, so it is something that some members have thought about and brought to our attention," current SAC president Anna Kauffmann said. "It was kind of something that we all have thought about and it was proposed to see if it was an option. We think that it would make SAC a more professional organization -- more structure, more organized, more sophisticated in a lot of ways."

This would be only the second school-sponsored organization that pays its executive board. The first is Student Government Association, which funds the Student Activities Council.

"Since SAC is a branch of student government, I think the idea was it could be done in SAC as well," Kauffmann said.

According to SGA Vice President Greg Felock, student government executive positions receive a small stipend for the similar reason that they have a lot of time commitments that they have to go to, and the stipend compensates for the time.

"It would definitely come out of the SAC budget," Felock said. "It's not something that we would put more money into, but it would be their decision. But depending on how they look at it, it is not unheard of."

Felock added that although SGA approves how much money SAC gets every year, they do not have the power to tell members what to spend it on. However, SAC does need SGA's approval to change their constitution and bylaws, which they plan to do with this change.

SGA had its last meeting of the year on April 21 and therefore can not vote on this issue until the next school year.