The other initiative was to get the AS to push Residence Life to implement a Good Samaritan Policy within the halls, and have ResLife work with University Police to produce a compact substance policy guide for the entire campus.
Because the AS Elections Code hadn't been published in time for when the language of any initiatives had to be turned in to the AS Board of Directors, I had to go to a board meeting to request an extension for the deadline, which was granted. However, in order to have an initiative even be considered for the ballot, it has to be passed by the AS Board of Directors. The next board meeting, I gave information about both initiatives for the board members to consider. The next board meeting, a couple of others from the campaigns told the board members any more information that was needed (since I was in Salt Lake City at that time), and the board determined that the initiatives would be allowed on the ballot. All of that happened in the span of three weeks - one board meeting per week. The next step was to collect the AS Elections information packets and petitions for each respective initiative. At Western Washington University, each initiative petition needs to have at least 696 valid signatures in order to get onto the ballot. That is, 5% of the vote.
Two years ago, I ran for Vice President for Student Life, and last year, I ran for Vice President for Activities and sponsored the opposition campaign for the referendum that asked if students wanted to make the school a smoke-free campus. (I lost both races, and the majority of those who voted did so in favor of making a smoke-free campus, but it was close, so the school decided to compromise instead.) As a candidate, you have to collect only 150 signatures. Both years, I was able to pretty easily get all of the signatures I needed. (It was a hassle, but doable.) I thought that with a couple of other people helping me and a longer timeline, that we would be able to collect all of them. Nevertheless, because of the delay in getting the initiatives approved and the occurrence of spring break, we didn't get the initiative packets until a week ago, which meant that we were supposed to collect all of those signatures within one week. (So much for the longer timeline.)
Keep in mind that the three or four of us working on the campaigns have busy lives of our own - classes, work, etc. Probably the biggest hurdle though was that we weren't allowed to utilize any physical campaigning materials. Physical campaigning isn't allowed for any candidate or initiative campaign until a certain date. In order to to find people to sign the petitions, you...find people. What I usually did for my personal campaigns was go to Academic West, Miller Hall, and the Viking Union to find people sitting and eating, studying, or conversing, and give a short speech, answer any questions they had, and gave them the petitions to sign if they so chose to. Because initiatives require so many more signatures, I quickly learned that my default method would not give us enough signatures in time. I emailed a couple of school clubs and professors to see if they would allow me to talk to their members/students. But again with our schedules, we didn't have time to go to many classes or clubs.
On Thursday, I started to feel hopeless. I noticed that I was incredibly sluggish, and whichever organ in my lower abdomen that aches and makes my body tremble was doing just that (I think it means I need more sleep), so instead of dedicating more time to collecting signatures, I went home to eat and take a much needed nap. At the SSDP meeting later that day (and right after my nap), we expressed our concerns, but I still made the push to try to get all of the signatures we needed by the deadline. Before and after the meeting, I did not physically feel well. My chest was hurting and I couldn't comfortably walk at the brisk pace I normally do. I had no idea if the chest pain was due to my asthma, stress, or both.
During my weekend trip to Seattle to put up flyers on campuses for Students For Liberty (join the Campus Coordinator Program), spend Easter with my older sister (which I wasn't expecting to do), and other shenanigans (use your imagination *wink*), I thought hard about how to go about collecting the rest of the signatures needed for the initiative petitions...or if it was even worth doing it anymore. Talking to the other campaign members on Thursday, it was very clear that we were all both physically and emotionally exhausted from work and classes, and to have to collect nearly 700 signatures on top of that was not comforting. I have had a few people tell me that I have this "flame" within in me that never dies out and keeps me going. This flame told me on Thursday that we still might have what it takes to get all of the signatures. While I do believe in hard work and looking on the bright side, I see myself as a realistic optimist. My optimism is grounded in reality, or so I like to think.
This morning, I realized how unsuccessful this whole thing had been, and any attempts this late in the game to collect the rest of the signatures would be fruitless. By this point, my stress levels were astronomical. The desperation and helplessness I felt was terrible. If any of you have had depression or depressive symptoms, you are probably familiar with that feeling of not even wanting to try, and even if you do, it would't even help. It was similar to that.
If you can't tell, these initiatives are important to me. I try to do everything in my power to ensure that marijuana, both medical and recreational, and industrial hemp will become legalized on the state and federal levels in the United States. With the substance policy initiative, I can't help but be haunted by the thought of how many students on campus get in trouble within the next school year because of unclear substance policies, or even worse, getting into trouble for calling for help. Or having an unnecessary death because people were too afraid to call for help. The cannabis legalization initiative is one we have been trying to get onto the AS Elections ballot for three years now. The first year, the sponsor was working on it all by himself. Last year, we had a delay in the approval of the initiative. I thought the third year, for sure, had to be our lucky year.
Between now and next AS Elections, we will be working on trying to see what we can do with these two initiatives without going through the election process. For example, talking with ResLife and the University Police to see what they think about working together to come up with a single, compact substance policy guide. If it works, great. If not, we could use any knowledge gained from those interactions and go through the AS Elections process again. However, what's nice about having campaigns like these is that they are more likely to gain more publicity than anything else would. What else we will work on is coming up with ideas on how to work smarter, and not necessarily harder - obtaining more campaign members, reaching out to more professors, clubs, etc. I also plan to talk with the AS myself to share my concerns with their standards on how initiatives can get onto the ballot. I know some other people who have worked on initiative campaigns, and it's relatively known that the AS Elections cater more towards candidates than initiatives.
When I finally messaged the campaign members about how I felt about suspending both campaigns, I felt really empty inside. This was originally going to be a Facebook update, but I decided to put this on here because it ties into political activism. Not to mention, look at how long this post is! All of the work we put into this would come to nothing. When I ran in the AS Elections, I at least was allowed on the ballot and had a fun experience. With this, I ran myself into the ground, had to give up on an avenue to address some very important issues I care about, and don't even have an awareness campaign we could utilize (at least through the AS Elections). I wanted to cry, but I just didn't feel sad enough to actually do so. Tonight would have been one of those nights where I go to a bar to do homework and drink some beer, but I need to catch up on sleep.
It annoys me when some people don't even want to attempt _________ because they're "just one person," or "the system is too big and corrupt." I constantly put myself out there because I sincerely believe that an individual is an essential component to a group or a cause. When I went sign waving in downtown Bellingham because I was angry that nobody seemed to be paying attention what was going down with Syria because they were too distracted by Miley Cyrus, I didn't actually think I would influence individuals with actual powers on US-International relations. I did have people come up to me and ask what was going on. I made people pay attention. I don't know if I actually made a long-lasting impact on anybody, but if I can positively influence one person with my actions, I can say that what I do is worth it. With failing at getting these initiatives onto the ballot, I feel small. While I would have loved to put in more effort to gather signatures, my health and grades can handle only so much extra stress.
I don't like to fail. Because of suspending these campaigns, I feel like a disappointment to myself and others. These were supposed to be more than "feel good" campaigns. I wanted them to bring about tangible results, or at the very least, produce a snowball effect. In order to rid myself of these bad feelings, I am going to analyze on how we can still get these campaigns going (whether it be working outside of the AS Elections or in next year's), forget the disappointments, and move on. I like to learn from the past, not have it control me. It's so hard to put this past me, but I am looking at the bigger picture. A little setback will not tarnish what I ultimately believe in. This has definitely been a low point in my political activism, more specifically, my drug policy activism. I cannot help but feel that smarter and safer drug policies are not being implemented fast enough. This ordeal does not help with that. If this was a low point, I am going to eventually find another high point. Since drug policy is a topic I will probably be drawn to for the rest of my life, I will exposed to both low and high points. Let's look forward to the high.
