USC’s student senate adopted several pieces of legislations, including increasing the university’s standard minimum wage for all campus workers and providing healthier options at campus vending machines.
The senate passed a recommendation made by Sens. Lenyx Coviak, Matthew Frye and Iris Sanders to increase the university's standard minimum wage to $15 for all campus workers.
According to the recommendation, as of 2023, only temporary employees and salaried graduate workers receive $15 an hour while most student workers receive much lower wages.
Many students are struggling to be financially stable with low wages, and it’s causing them to seek off-campus jobs that pay better and leave on-campus jobs unfilled, according to the recommendation.
“This would be essentially asking for that policy that exists for some students on campus to exist for all,” Coviak said.
Healthier Vending Machines
A recommendation was also passed by the senate to initiate a pilot program to implement healthier vending machines in some buildings on campus. The recommendation was sponsored by Sens. Emma Allocco and Lexi Baldinger.
The buildings included in the recommendation are the College of Nursing Clinical Education Building, Williams-Brice Nursing Building, Arnold School of Public Health and the Darla Moore School of Business.
With busy schedules, students and faculty who don’t hold a meal plan might not have access to a healthy meal all day, according to the recommendation.
The university has a contract with Coca-Cola, which offers healthier choices for vending machines on campus and there are other companies who could potentially provide healthy options as well, the recommendation said.
The pilot program would run for one semester with one vending machine at each of the selected locations containing food and beverage options with more nutrients and less sugar and sodium, according to the recommendation.
Funding Adjustments for Student Organizations
A bill was passed by the senate to add a section to the chapter of the Student Government codes that determines student organization's requirements for funding. This bill was sponsored by the finance committee.
The bill creates a new section for conferences specifically held at USC. Conferences student organizations attend at other locations will now be listed as external conferences, finance committee Chairman Jackson Matthews said.
“The reason why we wanted to do this ... is because right now the only way that they could potentially request money for something like this is to go through the normal program-type of request,” Matthews said. “That gets tricky because you can't really charge people for that type of request, nor can you deny entry.”
According to Matthews, the added section provides a clearer way to make requests for USC-hosted conferences.
Once this option becomes available, there will be a lot more organizations hosting events on campus including professional ones, Matthews said.
Other Legislation
The senate also passed a bill sponsored by the judiciary committee to increase fairness for both the elections commission and the elections codes.
“It's just taking out a bunch of loopholes in the codes and tightening them all up to make it fair," judiciary committee chairwoman Kiki D’Apolito said.
The senate also passed a recommendation to add a ramp to the Russell House Theater and a bill to promote student engagement at the beginning of the spring semester.
The Dec. 3 meeting was the last meeting of the fall semester. The senate will reconvene on Jan. 14, 2026.