During Central’s faculty development day on Jan. 28, a small group of Central students, as well as Central’s Student Government (SG) took a day trip to Olympia to lobby Washington’s legislators.

In small groups, the students visited individual legislators to lobby for topics ranging from elementary school programs like Compass to Campus to tuition freezes and campus renovations.

Danielle Sprague, who works for Compass to Campus, was lobbying for funding to keep sending mentors to fifth grade classrooms.

It’s “a good way to talk with the representatives to show them that we’ve made improvements,” Sprague said.

Students also lobbied for funding for the renovations of the Samuelson Building and Lind Hall.

If funded fully, the Samuelson Building would house the math and information technology departments.

Lind Hall is going to house the ROTC program.

Rep. Drew Hansen of the 23rd District, didn’t have a direct answer for whether or not he would support any of the proposals to which he was introduced.

Spencer Biallas, the SG Vice President for Equity and Community Affairs, presented the funding request to Hansen.

“The way he quickly dismissed the funding for the supplimental request…sounded like it was pretty unlikely it was going to pass,” Biallas said.

This year, unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of students who went on the trip, despite transportation being provided by Central. SG President Yosef Gamble is hoping that this will change in the next couple years.

“We’ll just have to explore the ways that we can reach out to students so that they’ll show up to these events,” Gamble said.

Despite the low attendance, Gamble thinks that the majority of the attendees of the lobby day were successful.

“Many of the senators and representatives that we met were very receptive to what we were putting out there,” Gamble said.