Lobby Day recap

Yesterday was lobby day and it was a wonderful thing to be a part of the efforts of so many wonderful people. For those of you that didn’t know or hear about Lobby Day allow me to explain a little bit. Basically the University of Illinois coordinated all three of its campuses to send students, alumni, faculty and staff members to the Capitol building in Springfield.

The purpose of this event was to pitch to legislators the concerns of U of I students. We were representing not only our own stories but the stories and concerns that our peers face. Many of us that attended had the opportunity to talk with our state senators and local representatives when they could spare a second. This was not as easy as it sounds though.

Basically we were told to go to the offices of the given representative and ask for them. When they were not there, we were either directed to wait for an unspecified period of time or to go to the House or Senate chamber’s doors and ask to ‘pull them from the floor.’ Some people had the opportunity to meet with their representative in their offices but the best way to actually talk to them was pull them. This was quite interesting because you would basically write the representatives name on a business card and give it to a guard outside the chamber. They would go inside and look for the representative – and if they found them and had a few minutes to spare, the representative met you outside and spoke briefly to you.

This was really a small form of chaos though. There were hundreds of students that converged onto the Capitol today it was unusually noisy and busy, or so I was told by a security guard. If you had the chance to speak with a representative outside the chamber it was for a fleeting moment because they were in the middle of their session for the most part of the day – voting on various legislation – which was a whole other form of madness.

I spoke to a number of legislators and told them about the petition that Students for Better Government has been gathering, regarding textbook legislation. For the most part they were receptive and understood the plight of what it was like to be a college student.

I felt that attending this event today was a really powerful experience. It allowed me to see firsthand the way our state government functions and gave me a better understanding of the legislative process. Being a part of a coalition of students representing the University of Illinois, it really felt like we could work together to make our voices heard and ensure that our legislators have our best interests in mind when forming and voting on legislation. The coordinating efforts of the U of I Alumni Association can’t be appreciated enough for all the hard work that they did to make this year’s Lobby Day a huge success. I was quite pleased with the University’s strong showing and was proud to be a representing the interests of UIC and its wonderful students on a very important day.