Imagine you’re a newly elected Student Government president. You discover in the morning paper that the state legislature wants to raise tuition for colleges and universities—again. "How can we stop this?" you wonder. You remember hearing that California student leaders successfully lobbied to prevent a tuition hike, and you need to know how they did it.

What if there were a truly national student organization to provide resources, networking, and communication between the thousands of campus leaders nationwide? Such a group could be a means to enhance and encourage state alliances by sharing information and resources, or it could lobby the federal government on higher education and social issues. Is another national student alliance needed at all?

Whose Issue Is It Anyway?
Part of the problem with the idea of a "national student alliance" is the fact that state and local governments control the majority of education issues. Such topics as university rules and regulations, tuition, and admissions vary from state to state and campus to campus, says Melanie Rainer, director of the Arizona Students’ Association. Only a few topics can be discussed nationally, such as the Pell Grant, financial aid, and student privacy and access issues.

For this reason, some student leaders say a new national group would best serve students by strengthening state alliances so they can learn from each other and have a greater say in their state and local politics. "The only way [a national student alliance] can work effectively is if it’s a loose confederation of state alliances," says Frank Viggiano, executive director of the Minnesota State University Student Association. "The cultures are so different from state to state that if we try and come up with a very strict way of doing things, you’re always going to offend someone."

Viggiano, who’s worked with SGs for 25 years, says that the first step toward a national student alliance would be to make sure every state has a strong state alliance. Since the 1970s, only an average of 10 to 20 states have had well-organized lobby groups. "Part of our responsibility as an organized state association is to go into the states that don’t have a permanent organization and start them along with the students," he says. MSUSA currently is helping to build a state alliance in North Dakota.

Connecting Across the Country
One of the primary purposes of a new national alliance would be its use as a networking tool. The ability for student leaders to access information about what other groups around the country are doing could be invaluable. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through a web site or e-mail discussion group, says Christopher Donathan, former president of the Western Student Association at Western Michigan University. If a student organization in Michigan is dealing with a problem, say community backlash against student drinking, it would be helpful if they could find out how other groups around the country have dealt with similar problems.

A national alliance could help bridge the gap caused by state borders by offering student leaders a forum to communicate. "A national group could better inform student groups about what they can do on the state level," says Stacey Valentin, a recent grad of Western Washington University and the 2001-02 state board president of the Washington Student Lobby. "Not only could a national organization keep states apprised of national trends, it could share resources and information on topics like encouraging student turnout in elections," she says.

Beyond just connecting student leaders and state alliances, Donathan says such an organization should provide access to information on training and development of individual and state groups. It also can provide recognition for the work they and their members do, either by sponsoring conferences or by posting useful information on the web. Bethany Ordaz, president of the fledgling Student Association of Missouri, a state alliance, says her group has learned much from observing the United Council of the University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s state alliance. Her group would benefit from a national organization that would let them gain resources from state alliances across the country. "There’s a lot to benefit from learning how other student leaders work with their own state governments," Ordaz says.

In addition to providing an on-line forum and resource base, a national alliance could sponsor national and regional conferences. Student leaders and staff from across the nation could meet and share time-tested methods of grassroots organizing, community outreach, fund-raising, public relations, and lobbying. Conferences often offer leadership training and present awards to top SG leaders.

Viggiano also says a national student alliance could let current student leaders learn from those who have come before. "If you look at the people in leadership positions nationally, a lot of them were SG leaders," he says. "We could provide a great service by allowing people an opportunity to meet each other." Since SGs commonly have tremendous turnover, having a centralized national alliance would create more "institutional memory." "It would be good to have one place where schools could get references and help that’s more stable," says Fay Roepcke, Associated Students director of legislative affairs at California State University at Chico. "I see [a national student alliance] as a place to help facilitate communication, a place for students to work on issues that the entire organization wouldn’t work on, and a place for students to refine their leadership skills."

A Lobbying Tool
A secondary and more controversial function of a national student alliance would be as a national lobbying body. Although a few organizations, namely the United States Student Association (USSA) and the American Student Association of Community Colleges (ASACC), have stepped in to fill the role of advocate and watchdog for college students, there’s still no singular student voice in the nation’s capital.

Elected officials often ignore students because they don’t donate much money to campaigns and only a small percentage vote, Valentin says. The average student may be unaware of issues in higher education that affects him, so a national student organization could represent his interests. "It would be detrimental and harmful for students to have no voice at the national level," says Nilda Brooklyn, former SG president at the University of Oregon and a current member of the Oregon Student Association. "Having a national organization gives students the opportunity to channel their energy, resources, and power behind a singular issue and speak as a unified voice."

Lauren LaRusso, president of the Douglass College Government Association of Douglass College of Rutgers University in New Jersey, says, "an ideal national student association would support getting young people to go out and vote with every election to make our voices louder in our national and state governments. Politicians would show a greater interest in our concerns and be more inclined to support our agenda if we show them our vote matters to their campaign." A national alliance also would influence students to get more involved in not only the federal government but also their own campuses and communities.

Phil Clegg, ASACC executive director, says a national group should promote national issues to make sure that Congress, the president, and the administration are aware of college students’ needs. "It should lobby for legislation that increases access to higher education, keeps watch of national trends, forces elected officials to be responsible for their decisions, and creates unity between students and state student organizations."

However, because most of the decisions on education issues are made at the state level, a national student alliance would be limited on the number of topics it could champion. The Pell Grant probably is the number-one issue ASACC lobbies for because most college students from disadvantaged backgrounds can use it to finance their education, Clegg says. ASACC also is working for new legislation to give students input on student-loan interest rates and how much money is allocated to loan programs.

Where lobbying becomes a controversial issue is when a national student group begins pursuing social issues. For example, the USSA’s approach includes lobbying for numerous controversial social issues, including gay and lesbian rights and affirmative action. "USSA covers a lot of great stuff, but it’s more social justice than some schools are OK with," Roepcke says.

However, Julia Beatty, the 2001-02 USSA president, says that social issues are key in advocating the rights of college students. "We need to organize students to create and expand recruitment and retention programs on campus for under-represented students," she says. An ideal national student alliance must be representative of the entire student community, Beatty says, and all students must have a voice at the decision-making table and be represented in the leadership of the organization.

The problem with existing national groups is that, although they lobby on national issues, they don’t represent a majority of the nation’s colleges as members. "You can’t claim to represent students when a good portion of student associations aren’t affiliated with your group," Donathan says. If a national alliance plans to express the views of the entire student body nationwide, it’ll have to contend with a wide-range of political perspectives. And getting students who are both "liberal" and "conservative" to agree on social issues will be problematic.

"People get fired up about social issues, not whether the Hope Scholarship applies to books," says Sam Aborne, three-time member of the Board of Directors for the Associated Students at California Polytechnic State University. "But I believe you need to create a clear, core focus of higher education, rather than being the catchall for every issue."

Contact Rainer at 520-621-6306, Viggiano at frank@msusa.net, Donothan at cdonathan@yahoo.com, Valentin at stacey_valentin@hotmail.com, Ordaz at 660-341-0747, Roepcke at aslegalaffairs@csuchico.edu, LaRusso at larue677@yahoo.com, Clegg at cleggph@uvsc.edu, Beatty at pres@usstudents.org, or Aborne at saborne@calpoly.edu.