A group of elected and appointed officials are working through a nearly $3 million budget. After rationalizing a way to approve hundreds of thousands of dollars for various organizations with very few cuts, they arrive at their own internal budget. They review the budget decisions of the last few weeks and their own pledge of fiscal responsibility, and they decide on what they can see is an appropriate course of action: give themselves a raise.

Irresponsibility, thy name is ASM.

On Monday, the Student Services Finance Committee decided all their hard work could benefit from some extra cash. They voted to give SSFC members who show up to mandatory meetings and seem to be paying attention a $40 per week stipend.

This board respectfully asks the question: What were you thinking?

Students should not join SSFC or any other bureaucratic arm of our student government because they're going to get compensation out of it; they should do it because they genuinely care about the state of this university. According to SSFC chair Alex Gallagher, in a Badger Herald news article, a position on SSFC requires just six to 12 hours a week. We do not think this is a tremendous burden, and accordingly, a stipend is not necessary.

If SSFC thinks its members need an extra incentive to do the job they were either elected or appointed to do anyway, then perhaps those members should step down — it certainly could make the committee more efficient.

The absolute lunacy of a finance committee deciding they should direct funds to reward themselves for putting in minimal effort is astounding. With the never-ending debate over distribution of segregated fees centering on SSFC, it seems not only unreasonable, but selfish for SSFC members to receive any of that money.

Perhaps even more astounding is the fact that this measure was initially voted down, but reintroduced by SSFC member Brittany Weigand, despite her concerns the Student Council would not approve such a measure. If this is the case, then why waste time bringing it up again?

Let us make it clear to SSFC: This raise is irresponsible, wasteful and one of the more foolish ideas ASM has come up with — even the proposed grocery store had more merit than this. Well, maybe not.

Still, unless SSFC would also like to pass a measure deeming themselves irrelevant, it should do itself and the rest of campus a favor and withdraw this proposal.