By Ashley Strehl, Editor in Chief
NWOSU students received an email that left some campus student employees with questions.
The email from NWOSU’s Human Resource and Payroll Director Cheryl Ellis read, “Based upon the CDC guideline the University has taken the precautionary action of placing all student employees on administrative leave. This means that no student employee should work for the University at this time (except those in an essential position such as campus security).”
This administrative leave status is effective from March 23 through May 8. The email further read, “We are pleased to share with you that in an effort to minimize the impact on student employees this leave status will receive compensation. To receive the compensation, no action is necessary on your part. You will receive the compensation in the same manner your paycheck normally comes to you.”
Vice President for Administration, Dr. David Pecha said that student employees will be paid based on their average hours that they turned in after four weeks of work in the month of February of this year. “You couldn’t look at January or March, because they weren’t whole months,” Pecha said. “That’s the fairest way we could think of to do it.”
The federal government told the department of education that they must finish using the federal work-study money awarded to student employees that are paid by federal work-study. However, decisions regarding E&G student workers are decided by the university. NWOSU decided to match their decision in compensation, even though there was no federal or state mandate.
Pecha said that deciding what steps to take was an effort that the University made as a whole. “We budgeted that money, we were planning to spend it on student wages,” Pecha said. “If that is a little thing the university can try to do to help out some of our students and our workers, then we wanted to do what we could.”
If students have any more questions regarding their student-employee pay they should reach out to the NWOSU human resources office at 5803278530 or email jrkephart@nwosu.edu.