WWU Student Gets #Lobbylicious in Olympia

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Heather Heffelmire, the Legislative Liaison for the Associated Students of Western Washington University (ASWWU). In that position, she is spending the winter quarter in Olympia as a full-time lobbyist working on behalf of the students at WWU. She’s been posting online about the experience under the hashtag #Lobbylicious. You can read her blog posts about lobbying here, here, here, and here. Please tell us your name and current position in student government. Please also tell us a little bit about who you are: your year, major, and any other background info you’d like to share. My name is Heather Heffelmire and I’m the Legislative Liaison for ASWWU. In simple terms, that means that I’m the student lobbyist for WWU students. I don’t like the word lobbyist, though – I prefer to call myself a student advocate. I like to think of myself as a voice for WWU students down here at the Capitol. I’m a fourth-year student studying political science and economics. I’m also a non-traditional student. After high school, I enlisted in the Navy, and that was really just a way to get money to pay for my education. I grew up in a low-income community and I’m a first-generation student, so that was really my only option to pay for an education. Now I’m using the GI Bill to pay for school. So when I talk about the importance of making a college education affordable, I don’t see it as something I just believe in theory – I see it as something that I’ve lived. I think it gives me an interesting perspective. How did you get involved in ASWWU? I attended a meeting of Western Votes, which is WWU’s chapter of the Washington Student Association (WSA). Western Votes does a lot of on-campus organizing around civic engagement and non-partisan voter engagement. From there, I got more involved in WSA and eventually in the United States Student Association (USSA). Last year was my first time having a paid position with student government. I did a lot of volunteering with Western Votes and was also the Elections Chair for ASWWU and managed the campus elections. Then I set my sights on the Legislative Liaison position – it seemed like a really exciting position. And as a student of color, I really wanted to bring that perspective to student government as well, since I don’t feel like that perspective is always recognized.

What does it entail to be the Legislative Liaison? There’s no such thing as a typical day. I’m down at the capital full-time, lobbying, really in the thick of it. People told me that you can’t know what to expect until you do the job. I’ve been down to Olympia before for WWU’s Viking Lobby Day, but being here full time is a different experience. On a normal day, I might meet with a legislator or two, then I might visit the House Education Committee and testify on a bill there. I think I have a really broad definition of what is considered a higher education issue. I think I get that from USSA. For me, the category of “student issues” can be very wide, so I interact a lot with other groups that are dealing with social issues and I look at how they affect higher education and students. I also work as a team with the student lobbyists here from other Washington schools. I love it because of the conversations we have about higher education issues. It’s great to try to bring the student perspective to the legislative process, to try to make heard a perspective that isn’t otherwise represented. Where did the #Lobbylicious idea come from? The first time I lobbied was at the 2014 Viking Lobby Day, which is WWU’s annual student lobby day. People think lobbying is really elitist, so I wanted a way to convey that lobbying can be something really fun, really accessible. Legislative work doesn’t have to be boring. You can put your personality into it. So #Lobbylicious was a play on the song Bootylicious and I thought it captured that sense of fun. What issues are you currently lobbying on? I’ve done a lot of work around voter access issues, which have been a priority for WSA and ASWWU. SB 5140 is a motor-voter bill that would let 16 and 17-year-olds pre-register to vote. I also worked on a bill to move the voter registration deadline to 11 days before the election, rather than the current 28 days. This would help us to engage more students in voting. WWU has a bad-ass voter registration program – we register around 3000 students to vote every year, which is huge for our small campus. We take our vote program really seriously, which is why we help more students register to vote than all the other public schools in the state combined. And we do all that in the week-and-a-half between when school starts and the voter registration deadline. Moving the deadline later would let us do even more. I’m also lobbying for college affordability. We hear about the idea of affordability all the time, but what does that mean? Tuition keeps going up and the state isn’t getting any new revenue for higher education, so how do we define affordability? We’re looking for ways to get more state revenue for higher education, which probably means changing the state’s archaic tax system. Some of the other student lobbyists here are working on other issues, including graduate student issues and providing child care for students. I’ve also spent some of my time on some other issues. I’ve lobbied for SB 5732, which would mandate body cameras for police officers. I also lobbied to get official recognition for Cesar Chavez Day. And I organized a WWU ethnic students lobby day that’s happening next week.

What have been the biggest challenges so far with this experience? One challenge is that it’s easy for the legislative liaison to become disconnected from the WWU campus – we’re three hours away and it’s hard to stay linked. So I’ve worked really hard to stay connected with the students on campus, including through my blog. However, the biggest challenges have been the occasional times when I’ve felt disrespected or ignored by legislators. It hasn’t happened often, but there have been some negative experiences. For example, yesterday I was testifying for the Senate Higher Education Committee on a bill that would require students to maintain a certain GPA in order to receive state need-based grants. I barely got into my testimony before I was cut off and told that there wasn’t time to hear my full testimony. I was asked to just summarize my testimony, but then when I began to do so, I was cut off again and told to stop for good. It was frustrating and embarrassing being shut down in such a public setting and it shook me up. I didn’t feel like I was being heard or that they wanted to hear from students. The demographics here can also be challenging. For example, there’s only one female African-American legislator. As a person of color, I can start to feel very lonely or feel that this space wasn’t built for me. The legislature is also very hierarchical – you definitely know that you’re at the bottom of the power ladder here. But you learn from your experiences and there’s something very powerful about just continuing to show up. What’s been the biggest surprise? The biggest surprise is that I’ve become passionate about state tax policy, which is an issue that I’ve never given any thought to before. I never connected that issue with the problem of rising tuition. But now it’s an issue that I’m deeply invested in. For other students who might be interested in lobbying, what advice would you give them? Definitely do it! I want to make lobbying a really accessible thing. Before, I thought that being a good lobbyist meant that you needed to speak really eloquently and know every possible fact about an issue. But the most important thing is to just tell your personal story. Legislators need to hear students’ stories. These decisions in the legislature will happen with or without us, so it’s cool that we can be in the room and have a voice. So students should definitely lobby if they get the chance, especially students who aren’t typically represented, like students of color and women. It’s important to keep showing up in these spaces and make our voices heard, it’s a really powerful thing. For anyone who wants more information about her lobbying experiences, feel free to contact Heather.