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Students lobby again
Student Government declares day a success, despite only three students showing up to lobby
SCSU Student Government left St. Paul feeling a sense of accomplishment and success with its second lobby day.
Student Government's Legislative Affairs Committee chair, Birch Carlson, vowed to meet with state legislators on the second lobby day after the disappointment of the first student lobby day.
According to Carlson the only disappointment on the second trip to the state's capitol was that more students didn't sign up for this great opportunity to meet with state legislators.
Carlson said that only three of the 15 students that signed up for the trip actually showed up. According to him, he and the other two students that went on the trip waited an extra half hour for the eventual no-shows to arrive.
Carlson said that he wished that the students would have shown up because he and the other two students ended up talking with every state legislator that they planned to.
"They (state legislators) all came right out and talked to us," Carlson said.
Carlson said that the group from SCSU got to talk with all of the legislators about three main issues � the bonding bill, contract freezes and Pell Grants.
The bonding bill also affects SCSU renovations for the campus, according to Carlson. He said that the bill has a great amount of support from the legislators and the SCSU campus renovations are likely to be covered.
Carlson also said that legislators are very supportive of exempting student activity fees from the contract freeze. The legislators that the group of students talked to expressed interest in the Pell Grant issue, but none were interested in supporting a bill to make changes to the grants.
Carlson said that the biggest discussion that the SCSU students got to have all day was the 15-minute talk that they had with Gov. Jesse Ventura. He said that the topics that the group discussed with the state legislators were also the focus of the discussion with the governor.
Carlson also said that the governor was very open to listening to the students' concerns, but made no promises.
"The appointment with the governor was very informative, but he didn't say yes or no to anything," Carlson said.
He said that the part of the discussion with the governor that stuck out to him was when the issue of the contract freeze was brought up.
According to Carlson, the governor was very questionable about the contract freeze and his support could be very useful in the future.
"We got the impression that Gov. Ventura will support the exemption of student activity fees from the contract freeze," Carlson said.
Student Government President, Shahjehan Ganny, said that he was so pleased with the effort and accomplishments of the second lobby day that he would like to see it continue annually.
"We hope to start making this (Student Lobby Day) a tradition for SCSU every year," Ganny said.
Ganny said that having the SCSU lobby day after the rally, which was organized by the Minnesota State University Student Association and the Minnesota State College Student Association, was an advantage.
"SCSU going again after the MnSCU rally is good because we can make sure that we have interviews and get St. Cloud State's opinion heard," Ganny said.
Geoff Higgins can be reached at: [email protected]
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