This week’s question seems to falsely assume that students who participated in the Lobby Day were free to advocate whatever position(s) they wished. If this had been the case, I would have participated in Lobby Day in a heartbeat. However, my understanding from those coordinating the event is that students who went along would be expected to tow the ASUW party line . . . I'm a very independent woman and I decided I just wouldn't be comfortable pushing someone else's platform for a group that didn't really represent my interests.

By the way, if you are interested in looking at what the Office of Government Relations stands for, you can check out their lobbying agenda on their website: http://ogr.asuw.org.

I guess I'll take the opportunity to make a little plug for an issue dear to my heart and that is political equality in college . . . the fact that conservative ideas and conservative students are faced with prejudice and discrimination in the university/college. Yes, everyone has probably had people make unfounded assumptions about them (i.e. prejudice) for some reason or another. So I don't want to pretend this problem is uniquely one of liberals to conservatives. But the fact that I know there are people who refuse(d) to see me as an individual; who seem to overlook that conservatives and lives, families, friends, feelings, etc.; who either know me as a conservative and therefore assume they know what I am like without regard to my own self-statements and without sufficiently getting to know me; or who start to get to know me as a person and therefore have difficulty seeing me as a conservative (which is an important, though not all-explaining, part of my identity). I also would say that student government tends to not represent the conservative part of the student body, perhaps because we are in the minority. This is especially frustrating for me.

I have spoken out on these sort of issues before, but I have decided the time has come for me to do so again. If anyone else on this campus shares my concerns and wants to discuss it with me, I invite them to get in touch with me by email: beccasemail at earthlink dot net. No mass mailings or advertisements please.