MATC Student government sent eight Student Government officials along with three Student Government advisors to Washington DC to attend the biannual National Student Advocacy & Leadership Convention. ASACC, the American Student Association of Community Colleges, hosts this event twice a year or once a school semester. This convention will have taught the students from community and technical colleges from around the country how to help lobby for student interests and set the freshly trained individuals out onto the world and talk with legislators of their districts and states.The students from MATC planned to meet with Paul Ryan, Herb Kohl, Gwen Moore, and James Sensenbrenner during their convention. Ted Carey, the President of ASACC, said “Less than three cents to every dollar [tax contributions on a national level] goes to education while 85-90 goes to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and defense.” Travis Lilac, MATC West Student President and attendee at the ASACC convention, also commented, “The fact is the majority of the senate does not feel that education is a highly regarded priority.” The organization hopes their actions convince the legislators to keep in place Pell Grants and Student Loan Deferments to help students continue to further their education.

This convention also contained a service project. This service project was to help assist the Community for Creative Non-violence; a homeless shelter in DC that is being built that will house 1,341 and assist the homeless in DC. MATC Student Government spent March 8-11 collecting supplies to help assist with ASACC’s larger service project. They collected underwear, toothbrushes and shirts along with other hygienic and basic living necessities. These items were put into ten boxes and sent to DC for the convention to be sorted into hygiene kits. The extras were donated to various shelters in the Milwaukee area.

Jerry O’Sullivan, Student Government Advisor and ASACC Board of Trustee, said “We [ASACC] do a service learning project before every [ASACC] conference.” Diana Galindo, MATC Downtown Student Government Official and attendee, at the ASACC convention, commented about the service projects, “It’s [doing service projects] an awareness issue for students to realize what they have.”

ASACC is a national based organization that combines student governments of all community and technical colleges to be trained to lobby to the government on issues that affected. This organization was founded in 1984 alongside the WSG, Wisconsin Student government, at MATC. Jerry O’Sullivian, Student Life, is part of the Board of Trustees in ASACC. This organization works to help protect student rights and ensure that students will continue to have the ability to go to school.

While this event is closed to Student Government, Lilach encourages students to visit their local Student Government or Student Life Offices to leave comments and talk with Student Government or call (414)-302-5215 to call their phones. Students need to voice their opinions to their officials in order to be represented by their senators.