Graduate and undergraduate student representatives laid out concerns over rising costs at a sparsely attended meeting of the Faculty Senate Thursday afternoon.

Graduate Student Council representative Adam Beberg described a large discrepancy between the minimum graduate student stipend and the cost of living at Stanford.

According to University financial aid statistics, he said, the average monthly cost of living is $2,735. Because graduate student stipends are taxed, the gross income required to meet this standard is about $3,100. Beberg told faculty that minimum stipends at Stanford can be as low as $2,450 per month.

“So there’s a gap of about $600,” he said. “At the minimum, there’s a big problem.”

Biology Prof. Mark Simoni said that faculty sympathize with the plight of graduate students but that departments face budget constraints.

“I don’t know a faculty member at Stanford who would not like to increase the stipend for graduate students,” he said. But he noted that when the Biology Department raised graduate stipends by $500 for next year for the approximately 100 students in the program, “that’s one less graduate student we can take.”

Beberg acknowledged that the stipend problem does not have an obvious solution.

“We do know there’s a give and take,” he said. “We do understand both sides of the issue, and we understand we can’t just raise pay out of pixie dust. But it is becoming an issue [especially with inflation].”

Undergraduate Senate Deputy Chair Eugene Nho ‘10 also presented faculty with difficult-to-resolve financial concerns.

“I come to you with problems and not solutions,” Nho said.

He highlighted the price of course readers, which are required by approximately 150 of the 1000 undergraduate classes offered per quarter and cost between $60 and $85.

For students taking multiple reader-requiring courses per quarter especially, Nho called the expense “not a negligible number.” He urged faculty to post links to journal articles on CourseWork instead of including them in a reader and to seek low-cost printers as alternatives to the Stanford Bookstore.

“The ASSU believes the faculty’s help is very critical in resolving this situation,” he said.

Nho said that keeping Green Library open later was a key concern for undergraduates.

“Among its peer institutions, Stanford is one of the few that don’t open their main libraries for 24 hours, or at least until 2 or 3 a.m.,” he said.

He presented results from an online survey of undergraduates in which 85 percent responded that they were unsatisfied with current locations for marathon study sessions.

“Students love Green,” he said.

University Librarian Michael Keller said that he was sympathetic to undergraduate concerns, but that budget and staffing issues mean that keeping Green open later would be an expensive proposition.

The Faculty Senate unanimously approved a memorial resolution for Coe Professor of American Literature Jay Fliegelman, who died on Aug. 14, 2007. Senators also voted to authorize several joint graduate degree programs which double count 45 units or less provided that those programs are approved by the departments involved.