Barack Obama has the Oval Office, Chris Gregoire has a mansion, UW President Mark Emmert overlooks Red Square, and ASUW President Madeleine McKenna has a small, windowless office tucked away in an unnumbered room on the fourth floor of Condon Hall.

Not exactly an ideal working area for McKenna and the rest of the board.

But the lackluster office space hasn’t stopped McKenna or others on the Board of Directors from preparing for a busy year ahead. The directors, all but two of whom are — according to McKenna — currently in or around the U-District, are focused on exactly what they broadcasted during the campaign: being a strong influence in the next legislative session.

McKenna is currently a strategic-planning intern for the Port of Seattle, a role she says is similar to her position as ASUW president, as she is helping to craft an agenda for the entity to accomplish its goals.

ASUW Vice President Eric Shellan is also involved this summer as a full-time intern for the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee.

McKenna works about 30 hours each week at the port, and says she also spends around 20 hours each week doing ASUW work, much of which is networking with politicians and other important people.

Recently, she met with state Senator and Chair of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee Derek Kilmer, as well as Rep. Reuven Carlyle, who is slated to be the chair of the house’s parallel committee next year.

McKenna, accompanied by Shellan and Director of Faculty, Administration and Academic Affairs Jedediah Bradley, also provided a testimony at the Governor’s Committee on Transforming Washington’s Budget last Wednesday, making a plea for higher education. In it, she stressed the need to continue allowing the UW to be an affordable institution.

“Enough is enough,” McKenna said during her speech. “Unless state leaders stand up for higher education, the UW will quickly become an institution reserved for the elite.”

In her speech, McKenna spotlighted recent UW graduate Tim Harris, who completed an Honors thesis in psychology, was crowned homecoming king, and was only able to attend the UW as a result of the Husky Promise and state-need funding. She told the committee that Harris hopes to one day return to Washington to provide psychiatric care to “rural and resource-poor communities.” McKenna considers stories like Harris’ essential to selling the message of higher education.

Likewise, she pointed out that the governor’s all-cuts budget, which was released late last year and balanced the budget without any revenue increases, cut 60 percent of the funding for the state-need grant.

“It just goes to show that when we do have to cover the deficit somewhere, financial aid is going to be one of the areas that is especially vulnerable,” McKenna said.

Other than directly lobbying politicians, one of the ways the new board plans on gaining influence and encouraging greater funding from Olympia is by registering 5,000 students to vote in the general election by the Oct. 4 deadline, just five days after fall quarter begins. It’s a daunting task, with the possibility of registering voters during Dawg Daze and the weeks leading up to the first day of instruction.

“It’s a lot,” McKenna says. “And anybody who has done voter-registration work will tell you it’s a lot.”

Mckenna said that the Office of Government Relations is looking to partner with local organizations like the Washington Bus, WashPIRG, and on-campus groups like residence halls and political clubs. The 5,000 figure was calculated to be the number that would make a “sizeable impact” in a race, based on past voting data from the U-District. Because Speaker of the House Frank Chopp represents the U-District, the ASUW feels that they may be more easily noticed if they can it to the 5,000-voter goal.

“If we could have 5,000 students registered this year, Speaker Chopp would have to listen to what we say,” said Jono Hanks, former director of the UW Office of Government Relations. “Having that many students registered is a way of telling our representatives to represent us, or else we will vote for someone else.”

UW lobbyist Margaret Shepherd also said that getting 5,000 students to vote would do more than just tilt the election.

“I think just registering 5,000 students to vote sends a strong message to the legislature that students are involved, engaged, and they care,” Shepherd said.

At the same time, the ASUW Board of Directors has been and will continue to be creating a legislative agenda for next year. Most of the work right now is research, but leading up to the beginning of autumn quarter, McKenna says the ASUW should have a lobbying strategy.

But it won’t be all paperwork, moving boxes and policy-based meetings for the new board. Though many of the members came from different tickets, McKenna wants to see the current board come together.

“This summer, we’ll be focusing on building our board cohesion and teamwork,” she said. “We came out of the elections coming from two different tickets, and we’ll really be working to make sure the board can coalesce around a common vision for the entire year.”

While at first glance the ASUW offices may look like the board is vacationing in the Seattle sun, UW students can rest assured their leaders are hard at work.

Reach reporter William Dow at news@dailyuw.com.