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Student Government plans next lobby day
 Media Credit: Michael Martin/Managing Editor A student protests the rising cost of tuition at Student Lobby Day Feb. 13 in St. Paul. The SCSU Student Government is planning another lobby day to be held some time in March.
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SCSU's Student Government is planning to hold another Student Lobby Day next month, and this time, the student association hopes that participants will be able to meet with their respective legislators.
Participants of the last Lobby Day were unable to meet with legislators, even though they had been promised that meetings would be set up so that they could voice their concerns over the proposed cuts to higher education funding. The reason given for this was that the legislators had cancelled the meetings.
This was told to participants by Student Government President Shahjehan Ganny on the bus ride to the State Capitol Building in St. Paul.
"Hopefully, if (students) are still interested, they can do it (meet with legislators) this time," he said. "It will be in early March, I would think. It's something that we've had planned for some time now."
Some 100 SCSU students attended Student Lobby Day Feb. 13. They joined about 1,000 students from universities and colleges across the state to protest the proposed budget cuts that would see about $50 million cut from higher education. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system and the University of Minnesota would each receive a $20 million cut, while the remainder would affect the Higher Education Office.
While Student Government members called the day a success, two students criticized its handling of the event in a Letter to the Editor published in Thursday's issue of University Chronicle. Former student senator Patrick Silver and Chris Monson, the internal vice chair of Student Government's finance committee, claimed that the students who participated in the event were "lied to and led to believe that they would have had appointments set up with their legislators for them."
Silver and Monson also claimed that Ganny had told the students that their appointments had been cancelled but in reality, the appointments had never been made. They also criticized Student Government for hiring two buses to take some 50 students down to St. Paul for the event when one would have sufficed.
Part of Student Government's weekly meeting Thursday focussed on the letter. Ganny said there were some inaccuracies in the letter which were pointed out and discussed, the first being the number of participants at the event. It was reported that 70 students, and not 50 as claimed by Silver and Monson, were transported to St. Paul for the event.
"I can't remember the exact number, but about 150 people had signed up (for Student Lobby Day)," Ganny said. "They didn't show up, so what can we do?"
On the claims that meetings with legislators had not been arranged, Ganny said two groups were supposed to meet with the legislators. One group, he said, managed to meet with the legislators, while the other did not.
"(Student Government legislative affairs committee chair) Birch (Carlson) and his committee members managed to meet with legislators earlier in the day," he said. "But it's impossible for us to get that many people to meet with legislators."
Ganny said what was important was that the participants were there for the House Higher Education Funding Committee meeting and the lobby.
"It was interesting that the individuals who wrote the letter did not even go to (Student) Lobby Day," Ganny said.
However, Desiree Westby, MSUSA public relations coordinator, refuted Ganny's statement, claiming that the Student Government meeting Thursday had discussed how only appointments for Carlson and his committee members had been set up with legislators.
Westby also refuted claims that it would be impossible for appointments to be set up for all the participants to meet with their respective legislators.
"That's what we've been doing all these years," she said.
Westby said that a motion had also been made Thursday to remove Carlson from his position as legislative affairs chair for doing an ineffective job of setting up appointments for participants. However, the motion was defeated as it was "wrongly" worded.
Whatever the reasons for participants not getting to meet with legislators, Student Government is planning to go ahead with the next Lobby Day. Although nothing has been finalized, plans are still moving ahead and the first order of business is to pick out a date.
"(Carlson) is working on it," Ganny said. "He will set up the meetings and I may help him if he needs it."
Leslie Andres can be reached at: [email protected]
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