This past winter during this year’s legislative session, I went into the belly of the beast to lobby the state legislature on behalf of the Evergreen student body as a part of an organization known as the Washington Student Association (WSA). If you saw my article in the 2024 February issue of the CPJ then you know the WSA is an organization run by students for students wherein the legislative officers from across thirteen of Washington’s public colleges come together to lobby for bills at the state level.
Each year the Washington Student Association creates a general agenda which is to represent the interests of all the students of the member colleges, over 150,000 students, this is the general agenda that was the basis of my lobbying activities this past winter. During the spring General Assembly (GA), the WSA creates a provisional agenda which is then established with further rounds of discussion and voting in the following fall. It’s important to note here that lobbyists from each college that are part of the WSA don’t just lobby for the general agenda, but each also usually create their own agenda with communication from their students about what their priorities are which they lobby for alongside the general agenda, which often overlap in some parts. Since the GSU is once again a part of the WSA we were invited to attend this Springs GA from April 6th to April 7th at Bellevue College. I was thankfully able to attend both days.
The picture there was incredible, a whole room of students on the third floor of what was supposedly Bellveues “nicest building” (sincerely the nicest college building I’ve ever been in) wearing suits and ties, scattered across round tables and percolating over to a fancy sandwich bar.. Most of the colleges had multiple people from their student governments such as their Presidents, Judicial Senators, Student life senators, Communications officers, and so on.
When I first came to the conference I wrote in my notebook a few things that I wanted to get out of the meeting. It was important to me to frame it for myself, and I was, after all, getting to stay in a nice hotel on student money. I should make sure I’m making this worth our money. This notebook was my talisman, friend, and comfort object, simply having it in front of me gave me a power and capacity to engage in other ways I would not have been able to. So, here’s a shout out to my notebook.
Saturday consisted of a couple talks, a few workshops and then the initial proposals, debate, and brainstorming for the draft policy agenda among the legislative officers.The important bit of information I got from the workshops was the fact that colleges feel reliant on the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) to get money for new infrastructure due to the decarbonization regulations. Soon a call to repeal the CCA will be on the ballot, if this goes through then the colleges will be looking for other ways to fund infrastructure projects… such as tuition.
As stated above, one of the essential aspects of this event was to debate on the policy agenda.
Due to the nature of this General Assembly occurring quickly after the legislative session I was not able to go through a process of collecting proposals from the student body, and to be sure this will absolutely be done for an Evergreen specific agenda. However through conversations with many members of the community and after some reflection I decided on four proposals. These were:
- The creation of community police, security, and safety response review boards on all campuses.
- The creation of a community housing safety review board
- Renovation and better maintenance for student housing
- Expansion of the supporting students experiencing homelessness program and basic needs program
Sunday involved the most important moments of the event. Now was when we had to actually vote on whether or not to put our proposed policies on the draft agenda. Thankfully my proposals passed, however this was not without pushback. Particularly one comment comes to mind, regarding the proposal for community police review boards: “Is this not just an emotional evergreen thing”, which was quickly answered by others before I could even get to it. Some of the other policies that were passed onto the draft agenda I consider of high importance were:
-Expansion of financial aid
-Collective bargaining framework for operation student workers
-More funding for mental health
-Making colleges have to do more to protect their students from sexual violence
For the finale of the event we had the election of multiple positions to the WSA such as the president, the communications officer, and so on. During the last two days if you listened carefully to the conversations going on around you, you could hear people making deals, saying if you endorse me I’ll endorse you, I’ll say something good about you during my speech and so on. Most interesting was the formation of what was basically a friend group or team of people who tried to do what they could to fill all the positions, and while this was unsuccessful it was quite amusing and unnerving.
In the end I returned to my notebook, writing that there were really no true friends to be made here, certainly no comrades. It is precisely the nature of the org as a youth org, which are learning to play the theatre of bourgeois politics, that makes contradictions so elusive to them. It’s precisely by realizing that these contradictions are actually there that I was able to act distinctively on behalf of the Evergreen student body.
