The how and why of SCERA’s previous demise will not be covered in this post. Suffice to say that after 8 years of extreme budget cuts, massive tuition and fee increases, and some of the craziest infighting ever witnessed in the SGA Senate, by the early 1990’s student leaders recognized the need to recreate SCERA and retool it’s mission.
SCERA’s new mission was to teach student leaders about the state’s legislative process, train students how to lobby state legislators, and then occasionally mobilize grassroots lobbying efforts (ie. phone calls or postcards from rank-in-file parents and students to their respective state legislators) in support of specific legislation.
In other words, the Student Government committed itself to creating its own legislative presence on Beacon Hill independent of the University administration. Toward this end the student leaders organized themselves using pretty much the same model employed by lobbying organizations of nearly every political persuasion from the AARP to the NRA to MoveOn.org.
First, there was an ‘inside game’. The students had about two dozen trained lobbyists on Beacon Hill who were led by the SGA leadership and the SCERA Student Coordinator. These amateur ‘citizen lobbyists’ eventually became a very effective force for the students and the University at the State House. They learned the ins and outs of the legislative process, understood and followed the proper etiquette for lobbying, mastered the art of ‘message’ and talking points, identified allies, and got to know the legislators and staff on key committees such as Ways and Means as wells as the Joint Committee on Education. They met with legislators and/or staff regularly, followed the progress of bills and amendments, and occasionally testified before legislative committees. Also, when circumstances called for it, they worked in conjunction with the lobbyists from the University - both from the campus and the President's office.
They also made some very modest but very important connections with both the Speaker of the House and the Senate President - connections that were eventually leveraged against the administration on multiple occasions and on multiple issues (to the administration’s enormous dismay and frustration I might add). In fact, in at least one instance, these student lobbyists were effective enough to accomplish something absolutely unheard of: they managed to get the Joint Committee on Education to report a bill out of committee with a ‘favorable recommendation’ – over the objections of the University President and his staff.
Essentially, the ‘kids” who wore worn out loafers and earned $7 per hour lobbying for the SGA proved more effective on Beacon Hill then the President of the University, who at the time was the highest paid employee in the state of Massachusetts. Sadly, this was more of a reflection on how weak the University was overall on Beacon Hill rather then a testament to the alleged massive legislative might of the students. But it was a huge victory for the students regardless.
At any rate, the other aspect of SCERA’s lobbying initiative involved creating an ‘outside game’ which meant organizing grassroots support of parents and rank-in-file students (as well as other constituencies) to get them to make phone calls and/or mail letters to their respective legislators asking their support on specific legislation. Again, these efforts were modest – and even crude by today’s standards. Remember – this was pre-email and pre-internet.
For instance, during the budget process and the fight to increase the University’s state appropriation, SCERA organized a phone bank. Key legislators were targeted, and parents and students from those districts were identified and then called via a phone bank run out of the SGA office. On another occasion, parents were tapped to lobby legislators on a bill before the Joint Committee on Education. And still, on a third occasion students were asked to make phone calls to the Speaker’s office asking him to kill the administration’s ‘tuition retention plan’. These calls were made by students and passerby’s from a table on the beach side of the Student Union Building.
All three of these grassroots initiatives were modest, generating maybe a few score of letters and phone calls to state legislators. But the timing and impact of these efforts played a critical role in delivering some major victories for both the students and the University as a whole.
As a direct result of this model, the students eventually amassed substantial power and influence in their dealings with the state legislature as well as the administration. As has been noted in other posts, student leaders subsequently ran up an impressive string of victories including:
- Increasing the University's budget allocation by $23.5 million.
- Stopping additional tuition and fee increases.
- Defeating Tuition Retention.
- Forcing the Administration to concede on Agency Fee for GEO.
- Forcing a resolution on Student Legal Services.
This model was effective because it combined the limited platform of the SGA with a textbook modern, legislative/lobbying campaign apparatus. Instead of following the traditional path of trying to appeal upwards through the public higher ed hierarchy, the students went outside the system and around it. They started at the top, gained influence over the University's ability to ask for money, and then used that leverage to force the administration to bargain and resolve a number of other issues - a few of which had absolutely nothing to do with state funding.
In other words, instead of going bottom-up (which doesn't work), they went top-down.
For those of us who helped organize and execute this plan, it was our hope that SCERA would remain an effective means of continuing this model, but alas - that doesn't seem to have been the case. Also, another very important reason that this type of lobbying ceased is that William Bulger became President of the University, and the administration's position on working with students to lobby changed dramatically. Instead of relying on a mobilized grassroots legislative base to help secure additional funding, the University administration returned to the "Big Man" Model of lobbying - a topic covered at length in another posting.
But can this model still be used effectively 'today'? I would argue that the general answer to this is 'yes, it can', but with the caveat that the effectiveness depends upon a number of factors, some within control of student leaders and some that are completely beyond anyone's control (ie. the economy and current political climate).
But overall, a sustained organizing effort to create a mobilized legislative base for the University is a must.
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