Western students lobby for legislative policies in Olympia at Western Lobby Day. Photo courtesy of Emma Palumbo and Stephanie Cheng.
By Morgan Annable
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, thousands of passionate Washingtonians flooded the capitol building in Olympia to air their concerns about healthcare, education funding and a plethora of other issues. Among those people were just under 100 Western students, gussied up in blazers and slacks, there to meet with legislators on behalf of the Associated Students 2017 legislative agenda.
The group left early Sunday morning from the Viking Union and we arrived in Olympia midday. We grabbed lunch on our own and then met up for a tour of the Capitol Campus led by former AS Vice President for Academic Affairs Josie Ellison, who now works as a Legislative Assistant in Olympia.
Western Lobby Day participants lobbied senators and representatives on both sides of the aisle, from all over the state. We advocated for issues falling under seven categories: tuition, revenue, student success, support for survivors, student trustees, civics education and voter rights and access.
Washington legislators, particularly those in the Republican party, are proud of the work that they have done in recent years to decrease and then freeze tuition. However, the freeze ends this year and will legally be allowed to increase every year, indefinitely. Our agenda suggested another tuition freeze, with state funding provided to fill the gap.
We also implored legislators to fully fund the State Need Grant, which helps higher education become a reality for the lowest-income families in the state. Currently, the State Need Grant serves 70,000 students, while 24,000 eligible students do not receive State Need Grant funding. Governor Jay Inslee has proposed a $116 million package for State Need Grant funding that would still leave 10,000 eligible students without aid. Many of the participants at Western Lobby Day are on the State Need Grant, so they were able to share their personal stories, making a stronger and more memorable case when speaking to legislators.
Anticipating that some legislators would want to know how the tuition freeze and State Need Grant would be funded, the agenda addresses “financially feasible, less regressive sources of revenue.” The list included closing the extracted fuel tax exemption, a new capital gains tax on the wealthiest individuals in the state, limiting the real estate excise tax exemptions, increasing the estate tax and instituting a tax on lottery winnings. The revenue section of the agenda may have been difficult for some of the students, since we are not all tax code experts, but it was both a necessity and a relief to have some suggestions up our sleeves in case legislators asked how our tuition and State Need Grant requests would be financially feasible.
Student success was next on the legislative agenda. We addressed the strain that the Counseling Center, the Academic Advising Center (AAC) and disAbility Resources Services (DRS) have felt in the past several years. Since 2007 the demand for appointments at the AAC has tripled, leaving students underserved and academic advisors stressed and overworked. Likewise, demand for the Counseling Center has doubled in the last five years and students are often denied service on campus and made to go off campus for counseling services. This negatively impacts students’ ability to focus on academics; increasing funding for these services will improve retention and graduation rates.
The most delicate and, for many, personal item on the agenda pertained to support for survivors of sexual and domestic abuse. On Sunday, while training for lobbying, we had a discussion about what personal testimony should look like and how to stay safe during conversations about sexual violence. The agenda item stated that cases are greatly under-reported on college campuses, and that Western is no different. We advocated for a statewide increase in funding for “specialized personnel, resources, and staff training to better equip the university.”
Next was the issue of the Student Trustee. Many students may not know that we even have a Student Trustee, who sits on the Board of Trustees as a non-voting member. This one student is tasked with representing the whole student body to a group of board members. We suggested that the Student Trustee should have the same voting power as the other trustees. Currently, not only does the Student Trustee not get to vote, they are required to leave the room whenever a vote takes place. Additionally, the AS believes that there should be a different system in place for how the Student Trustee is chosen. The agenda suggests that the student body should be allowed to democratically select the Student Trustee.
Electing the Student Trustee was not where discussion of the democratic process stopped on the legislative agenda; right after that was the section on voter rights and access. Many people, particularly older adults, like to say that young people don’t vote. In a sense, they are correct. Younger people do not vote as much as older people. However, as we stated in our meetings with legislators, we believe that this is not due to disinterest, but rather a lack of education and awareness about the civic engagement process.
Never satisfied with vague platitudes, the AS suggested specific methods for increasing college voting numbers. We advocated for full implementation of the Washington Voting Rights Act to address the institutional exclusion of communities of color in the democratic process. We also suggested the Motor Voter system, in which the Department of Licensing offers pre-registration for 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds. This system has been implemented in Oregon and California, and the cost to the state is minimal. The list continued, with suggestions about increasing voting access for people with disabilities so that they only have to go through the affidavit process once, requiring landlords to provide tenants with a way to change their registration address since many college students move frequently, and eliminating the poll tax by including prepaid postage on ballot return envelopes.
Last but not least on the agenda was a section about civics education, which directly related to the penultimate section about voting access. The item about civics education pertained not only to college students, but to younger children as well. Justification for its inclusion on a university legislative agenda was that our suggestions would help K-12 students be prepared for higher education. This agenda item was also the least concrete. We advocated for some sort of legislation that would increase the presence of social issues and civic engagement in public school classrooms, but there were no specific bills on which we were lobbying.
Because Western Lobby Day was held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, there were debates in both the Senate Chambers and the House Chambers on resolutions to honor the legacy of Dr. King. Many legislators from both sides of the aisle stood and spoke on behalf of the resolution. They shared personal stories about hardships they had overcome and how Dr. King and other justice workers had inspired them.
In the House, Rep. Kristine Reeves from the 30th District shared the emotional tale of her upbringing, intertwining the racism and poverty that her family has endured with the hope that has been instilled in her from a young age.
“Dr. King said ‘We cannot walk alone.,’” Rep. Reeves said. “He blazed a path so that we could walk together. Marching toward a world free from racism. Free from bigotry. Free from hatred. And we know that the work that he started will never be finished.”
Across the rotunda, in the Senate, one of the speakers was Sen. John McCoy from the 38th District.
“(Dr. King), along with others within this state, like Billy Frank Jr., espoused that if we’re all to progress together with equity we need to educate, educate, educate,” Sen. McCoy said. “So therefore, this session, we need to fully fund education so that we have equity for all.”
After a full day of lobby meetings and exploring the Capitol Campus, 20 of the students there had a chance to meet Governor Jay Inslee. This group included AS VP for Governmental Affairs Bryce Hammer, who orchestrated the whole event, and the group represented a variety of backgrounds and experiences. We presented some of the main points of the legislative agenda, gave short testimonials to personalize the factual claims and gave him one of this year’s bright green Western Votes t-shirts. Governor Inslee was receptive to the agenda, agreeing that keeping tuition as low as possible is a must and congratulating Western on our stellar voter registration drive.
To quote Lieutenant Governor Cyrus Habib’s concluding hope for attendees of the Senate debate, those of us at Western Lobby Day had a “fruitful and productive Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.” There are still two lobby days left this year. Both the Ethnic Student Center Lobby Day and the Environmental Lobby Day will take place on February 19. These are free events, but participants must register online. Contact the Ethnic Student Center or the Environmental Center for more information.