This past weekend, the Associated Students of the University of Missouri agreed upon what UM system student issues they will advocate for in Jefferson City this upcoming spring.
ASUM advocates on behalf of students in the UM system, working to better individual campuses and represent student voices to legislators. This year, they will focus on STEM tuition grants, an expansion to mental health resources, contraceptive access and more.
The organization divides itself into campus and system-level operations. On the campus level, it focuses on registering students to vote, informing them about policy and promoting civic engagement. On the systemic level, ASUM sends two students per UM system campus to travel to Jefferson City twice a week to advocate for students in Missouri’s capital.
Each year, ASUM develops core policy platforms to focus on throughout the session. To develop them, the organization reflects on the previous year’s survey data and reaches out to student voices on campus.
MU ASUM Legislative Director Bailey Martin explained the platform decision process.
“It’s really about looking at the priorities that were established in the previous year’s survey data, like what themes or gaps in access or struggles that our students are facing,” Martin said. “As well as just keeping an eye on the atmosphere and conversation happening at the four campuses.”
After developing several policy platforms in the fall, ASUM works during the spring semester to voice them at the capital.
This year, ASUM plans to continue pursuing the STEM grant program from their last session. They are working with Representative Don Mayhew to forward House Bill 2763, which would expand the Access Missouri Grant Program by providing an additional $2,000 per year. ASUM is pursuing this because of increased course fees due to the new tuition model.
Ben Hahs, ASUM Legislative Director, said what the program is aiming for.
“Because of the differential tuition model, prices for those in the STEM majors are going up and estimates are quite severe,” Hahs said. “Those students that are from lower income or marginalized communities will be suffering the most and will likely be getting priced out of those degrees, and we want to prevent that at all costs.”
ASUM is also sponsoring the Counseling Compact and the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact bills, which would expand student access to mental health providers.
“If we become a member of this compact, then our counselors can more easily obtain licenses in other compact states and vice versa,” said Lexi Hall, another ASUM Legislative Director. “So if a student comes to the Counseling Center at MU, or any of our campuses and seeks mental health services…those counselors there could also point them to these providers and other states that can see them potentially more quickly via telehealth than they would otherwise be able to do on campus.”
Given the organization’s focus on civic engagement, the new voter ID legislation in Missouri is also a point of interest for ASUM. Hahs said that of the 35 states that require photo identification, 27 allow student IDs; Missouri no longer does.
“The new thing that really worries us is that student IDs are no longer valid forms of identification,” Hahs said. “We would argue that because we are a public university, they are technically administered by the state, so they should be valid forms of ID. And if the system would back us up on that, then that may be beneficial in talking to legislators and the Secretary of State.”
Splitting their aim to focus on UM campuses, ASUM plans to platform a new program to provide basic need access, which includes healthcare, food, shelter and, as of recent, reproductive health care. According to Hall, this goal will be tackled on a campus and system-wide level.
“We are working on introducing our own original bill that would create a pilot program to have a basic needs coordinator staff member on our campuses,” Hall said. “That would be able to meet one on one with students, assess their basic needs and get them connected to the appropriate resources.”
The program would have three years worth of funding, and the legislature would be able to evaluate the impact for permanent funding in the future. If not through direct legislative action, ASUM plans to work with state agencies to put the issue on their budget requests.
“We have not really done that before, but I think it would be a good learning opportunity for us and the interns to get familiar with how we can achieve things through our state budget,” Hall said.
ASUM wants to include contraceptive access in the basic needs program, in response to Missouri’s ban on abortion services. However, the organization is concerned any contraceptive access provided could be challenged by the state legislature.
“The statute for our law is pretty big so there is worry that it could be interpreted in court to ban things like oral contraceptives and Plan B,” Hall said. “We’re going to work within the challenging political environment of our legislature and the challenge that we have as people that speak for all of the students in the University of Missouri system who have very different views on something like the abortion decision.”
ASUM expects some challenges to arise throughout the year to their proposed agenda. Hahs said there has previously been pushback at the legislative level whenever spending money is involved, in reference to their proposed basic needs bill.
“We will have to be strategic on how we introduce those programs… emphasizing to the legislatures the impact those programs will be making past just that dollar sign,” Hahs said.Aside from their policy platforms, ASUM looks forward to working with, educating and advocating for MU students in general.
“A core tenet of ASUM is empowering students to go on in the future and develop the skill set of being engaged in government, knowing that they can reach out to their legislators and visit them in offices and ask them questions, that they deserve to be represented,” Martin said. “So this is one of our efforts to demystify that process and to facilitate that experience for our students.”
Edited by Zoe Homan | zhoman@themaneater.com
Copy edited by Emily Rutledge | erutledge@themaneater.com