FactCheck: Sabb Salaries

It seems that Sabbatical Officer salaries are riding high on the elections agenda for our Trustees. The Penguin is FactChecking the claims of your candidates.

£104,000 of our money is spent on 4 Sabbatical Officers each year when most students can’t name one single thing they’ve done. This is madness. Let’s stop paying Alex Peters Day and her buddies, and with the £104,000 saved, all undergraduates can receive a free £30 credit on their sQuid cards.

Jason Wong, Trustee Candidate

Our Students’ Union has five sabbatical positions: the General Secretary, Education Officer, Community & Welfare Officer, Activities & Development Officer – all of which are full-time roles – and the Postgraduate Officer, a part-time position. Full-time Sabbatical Officers at LSESU currently receive £26,500 per year as a salary; the Postgraduate Officer is paid pro-rata. This totals over £120,000. It seems Jason Wong can’t do his maths.

Jason has also apparently forgotten over fifty per cent of the student body with his pledge to give all undergraduate students £30 on their sQuid cards. Jason may like to reconsider his policy with these new numbers.

Of course, he also seems to be misunderstanding the relationship between the Students’ Union and the sQuid. sQuid is an independent firm that is currently used exclusively by the School for its catering facilities and therefore a transfer of resources from sabbatical salaries to sQuid would remove significant funds from the organisation itself and put a further dent in the Students’ Union’s current financial deficit.