{"id":196,"date":"2026-02-08T21:08:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T21:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/?p=196"},"modified":"2026-02-23T20:08:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T20:08:36","slug":"evergreen-everywhere-all-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/2026\/02\/08\/evergreen-everywhere-all-at-once\/","title":{"rendered":"Evergreen Everywhere All At Once"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February 6, 2026\u2014With the chairs of the Legislature\u2019s higher education committees calling for protection<\/a> of public higher education budgets, lawmakers are beginning to hammer out the Senate and House respective budget proposals. Meanwhile, Evergreen alumni, students, faculty and staff are mobilizing to tell Evergreen stories that demonstrate the need to protect and support the college.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the flag of the Geoduck Student Union, 18 Greener students fanned out across the Legislature January 29 to meet with lawmakers and staff on how Evergreen is helping them achieve their higher education goals. United Faculty of Evergreen representatives are also in regular contact with legislators, in addition to alumni from Evergreen Advocates and members of the Evergreen Board of Trustees.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faculty member Greg Mullins brought Evergreen students from his 16-credit \u201cActivating Democracy\u201d course to the Legislature for a February 5th<\/sup> field day where they met the House Speaker and local legislators, watched committee meetings and went onto the House floor.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On February 2, Shelton Promise manager Monear Fatemi and student intern Alauna Carstens briefed senators on the Post-Secondary and Workforce Committee on how Evergreen is executing and supporting this landmark place-based scholarship. You can see the presentation at 24 minutes 50 seconds into this TVW video<\/a>. Committee Chair T\u2019wina Nobles gave the college high marks for our work to build community and support for these Evergreen students coming from Mason County.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evergreen\u2019s student trustee, Acacia Engram, also testified in her confirmation hearing at 1 hour in, same committee meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Higher education leaders in the House and Senate, as well as local legislators are asking that citizens who care about Washington state\u2019s public colleges and universities make their views known to House Appropriations and Senate Ways and Means members. (A reminder: state employees, including those at Evergreen, may not use work time or work devices to lobby elected officials.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the \u201causterity budget\u201d backdrop, those committees will now be hearing bills passed out of policy committees to see if they can be implemented without new costs.  Many bills which would help institutions like Evergreen, such as Rep. Gerry Pollet\u2019s bill<\/a> to provide full state funding for employee cost-of-living increases, will not likely pass this session. However, hearing the bill this session helps build support for the future, when funding constraints may not be as rigid. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 6, 2026\u2014With the chairs of the Legislature\u2019s higher education committees calling for protection of public higher education budgets, lawmakers are beginning to hammer out the Senate and House respective budget proposals. Meanwhile, Evergreen alumni, students, faculty and staff are mobilizing to tell Evergreen stories that demonstrate the need to… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5116,"featured_media":197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/evergreenleg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}