UW alumni have formed a PAC, UW Impact, to promote the UDub in Olympia and across the State. The cast is impressive, Chris Vance a high profile Republican, joins Christian Sinderman, neither a UW grad, will be paid lobbyists.
This may be good news. The challenge UW Impact faces is huge. 
Financial support for higher ed in WA state is about average for America (figure from the Washington Office for Financial Management). The UDub, however is a lot more than just a public school. Our peers are not the schools we face on the football field, the UW’s peers are the great world universities. Our peers are Cambridge, Berkeley, Stanford, Kyoto, Carnegie, MIT, the Sorbonne, … The legislators need to understand how great universities seed world class competitive economies.
UW Impact needs to explain to the legislators how that status affects the state. As one of the top universities in all 0f world, the U is a huge part of our new-economy industr
ial base. Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon, ATT, Nintendo, Amgen, .. all these are part of an enterprise made possible by the presence of this state supported institution. 
The UW also needs to do a lot better job. We need to tear down the ivy wall that really, really do exist around our the gated community we call the campus.
I doubt that many legislators, even those who understand why the Department of Computer Science is critical to keeping Amazon here, understand the perhaps greater importance of UW faculty whose strengths are in literature or history. Companies like the nes around Seattle do not localize around trade schools.
Perhaps the UW alumni can teach us something. The faculty has to do a better job off campus. As a political activist, I am horrified at the lack of involvement of our faculty in the public sphere. Why is it, with a faculty of our stature, that the State rarely turns to experts at the UW for help? Why are UW faculty invisible in local campaigns for better schools or the effort to block the privatization more of Seattle Center ? When we do act off campus, we act as if our UW affiliation was a secret.
The state part of the budget is actually relatively modest, perhaps 14%, but the return on that investment is huge. Obviously any investment that creates an income of 86% is itself amazing .. even without the much greater effect on the local corporate scene. Unfortunately, the legislators never seem to learn how all this works. They see us as the home of an NCAA farm team, an elite palace for exotic people doing mysterious things, or as a diploma mill. Frankly, the PR from our own leaders has fed this image rather than building the kind of pride of ownerships Washington state citizens should have.
300,000 alumns is a big number. Perhaps we finally will see as much attention given to the great achievements of our faculty and students as the admin seems to give the football team!
Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or [email protected]
photos by Ben Schneider of the Times. See the article at the Times.
Alumns also should take pride in the UW as magnet for foreign students. The markets for these students is big and we pay full tuition. The UW is behind only two foreign schools as a magnet. Australia, by comparison, is seeing a huge drain of its ability to sell its university programs to foreigners (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/loss-of-overseas-students-drains-uni-funds/story-e6frg6nf-1225971143649).
lobbying for uw by alums is a great long overdue idea
lobbying for uw by all citizens in washington state would be a lot better
to achieve latter, i suggest the alumni guys go and talk directly to the people of the state, and ignore the legislators for time being; a slow but surer strategy i think
i think maybe uw has lots of support in our state but no one is mobilizing it at all
the only question to me is who should lead such an effort and what resources are needed to get the job done and and where to get those resources.
uw alumni associaion is a very good start except they are focused on legislature, which i think may not work well
SOMEONE needs t do this.
I would bet $100 that a poll of WA state, incl the legislators would show that the UW is seen as a fairly ordinary state school.
I am very skeptical that Chris Vance will be effective. I believe that he has supported every Eyman anti-tax initiative and was against 1098. When he goes to legislators to ask for money, I can easily imagine them saying “Well Chris, you wanted smaller budgets, given that much of the budget can’t be touched, what exactly did you think would happen to the UW?”
Any group that is helping pay his salary is just helping support him and his anti-tax platform.
I hope you are wrong.
If the UW is a Democrat’s issue, then we willy really loose.
I suspect that political support has to come from a mix, that repre3ents both parties, including folks you and I might disagree with.
I do not mean that those folks would all be Republicans. For example, many on the left see an elite school as a bad thing. I hear all the time from the left why we could not replace much of what the UW does with community colleges! Many of these people figure that the best kids can go to Harvard and Stanford scholarship so why should taxpayers support the UW?
The radical right is not a lot different in this POV than the left. Mnay see UW faculty as elitist out of ststers and ask why do we need ’em?
I t5hink the worst of all worlds may be coming. The UW will be “rescued” by becoming a private school.
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