The Student Lobbyists

They have neither long experience nor large expense accounts. If they wine and dine legislators, it is on potluck dinners of hamburgers or spaghetti. But after two years of work in the California Capitol in Sacramento, members of the University of California Student Lobby have influenced the allocation of well over $8,000,000 and won the respect of once skeptical lawmakers.

"A lot of professional lobbyists would do much better if they could be half as good," says State Education Adviser Dr. Alex Sheriffs. California Governor Ronald Reagan, hardly a friend of student activists, now shares Sheriffs' estimate and considers the lobby "one of the university's strongest assets."

Started in 1971 with $35,000 in student contributions, the U.C. Student Lobby was the first of its kind, but it now has its imitators at other campuses, such as the State University of New York and the University of Colorado. Alumni from the California lobby went east and founded the National Student Lobby in Washington, D.C., to pressure Congress and federal agencies for financial aid to students.

The U.C. lobby operates on a yearly budget of $50,000, provided by the student unions at each of the university's nine campuses. It is headed by three recent U.C. graduates (Kevin Bacon, Linda Bond, Tom DeLapp) assisted by nine student interns. The directors make $600 a month and serve for up to two years. Each intern works for ten weeks, has his rent in Sacramento paid, and receives academic credit for his service.

Bacon claims to have learned more in Sacramento "than in all my years of education put together. It's an exciting life, being only 23 and affecting the allocation of millions of dollars."

Among the lobby's achievements:

>> Obtaining a $1,000,000 fund to evaluate and upgrade undergraduate courses and teachers.

>> Pushing successfully for $2,000,000 in state payments for student aid programs to replace those abolished by President Nixon's cutbacks.

>> Securing $1.6 million in additional student financial aid for the 1972-73 year and $2.5 million for 1973-74.

Recalls co-director Bond: "When we first started we really didn't zero in on anything. We attacked a whole spectrum of problems like prison reform, women's rights and the environment. Now we just concern ourselves with student-related issues." It was this focus and devotion to detail that began to win the respect of legislators. Says Assembly Speaker Bob Moretti: "I've seen them with my own eyes turn legislators around. They've been effective because they know what they're lobbying about."

The lobby's clout was also enhanced when the voting age was reduced to 18 years in 1971. That added over 1,000,000 youths to the state's voting rolls. Says the U.C.'s official Sacramento lobbyist, Jay Michael: "Now legislators really have to listen to this group because their constituency poses a voting threat."

The U.C. student lobbyists operate in much the same manner as more professional groups. Each day all twelve lobbyists receive a complete rundown of all the bills being proposed on either the senate or assembly floor. A bill falls into one of three categories -oppose, favor, watching. If the lobbyists are opposed to a bill, they try to persuade the sponsor to withdraw it. Each month the lobby puts out a score card of the upcoming bills and its attitude toward them.

Linda Bond says that it disturbs her "when people say the campuses are quiet. There are no more protests because they are no longer effective. Listen, you just don't get a million dollars by sitting on the Governor's front lawn. We're just smarter now."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.