CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s student leaders are asking for their voice back, advocating for the return of voting rights after they were stripped by the legislature earlier this year.
House Bill 3279 passed in April, and the governor’s signature eliminated voting rights on college boards of governors for student, faculty, and staff representatives. Since then, a collection of the state’s student representatives have lobbied legislators to restore them.
“We’ve had an intentional focus on using this year to build those relationships, not only to advocate for the student vote but to ensure that future SGAs have the ability to get student input to our legislators directly,” Colin Street, the Chair of the West Virginia Advisory Council of Students, said in a report to the state Higher Education Policy Commission on Friday.
Street, who also serves as student body president and student representative on the West Virginia University Board of Governors, outlined what the council believes to be important perspectives students provide to leadership. The organization believes that student representatives need the right to vote, and with it, the right to add items to agendas.
“Students are the ones living in the dorms. They’re the one that’s going to know if there’s a leak in a building and if a particular deferred maintenance project needs to happen, so it’s really important that students have the ability to make motions to bring those issues up,” he said.
The report addressed concerns that a lack of voting representation could result in an increasing level of student apathy on campuses around the state. HEPC Chair Mike Farrell cited his experience as student body president at Marshall University to respond.
“We tried to solve that in student government by sponsoring programs, bringing controversial and educational speakers to our campus to organize things that were student-oriented, and get as many students involved as possible,” he said.
In Street’s report, he emphasized the importance of student representation, its ability to make a student feel comfortable in West Virginia, and the effect that its elimination could have moving forward. He highlighted the pathway that many state leaders have taken from student government to the Capitol.
“A lot of the SGA and student body presidents end up becoming our state legislators down the line, so we want to ensure that this leadership opportunity is available and preparing our young people for long-term civic engagement in West Virginia,” he said.
In response, Farrell laid out his idea for developing a more consistent relationship between the HEPC and the Advisory Council of Students.
“One of the things I’d encourage you to do is if your monthly meetings produce minutes, that you send those into us here at the commission so that we know, other than these quarterly meetings, what you’re doing, and if we have thoughts or comments, we can reach back out to you and form a stronger, more interactive bond,” he said.
House Bill 3279 narrowly passed the state Senate during the 2025 legislative session, and the legislature reconvenes for 2026 on January 14.