The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 3/9/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Mike Kalush Trevor Trout, a senior and business major, sits outside of the College of Business. He has recently started a business involving chainsaw maintenance and will be graduating in May.

After a scattered speech about campaign strategy given to Andrew Boucher's organizers in the basement of the Wild Boar coffee shop last week, Trevor Trout leaned over to the Collegian reporter sitting in the chair next to him and whispered, "I wasn't expecting to get called on."

Trout, a long-time advocate for student rights, had just been asked to give a down-and-dirty how-to-pander lesson for city council hopeful Boucher's followers.

Boucher, a conservative Republican candidate for the student-filled District 5 council seat, hand-picked Trout and a handful of other students for advice on how to run his campaign.

And if anyone knows how to campaign and get students involved, it's Trout, who has a lengthy history of close community relations and student advocacy.

Trout, a senior business administration major, has been an integral figure for student advocacy, most notably joining a handful of student leaders in building relationships with state officials last year at a time when Colorado was at the bottom of the barrel in public funding for higher education.



Bringing a voice to the state

A year ago, Trout, holding a yellow legal pad, paced back and forth muttering his notes to himself in the lobby outside the Colorado Legislative Council Building in Denver.

He was about to become one the first four student leaders to implore action from the Joint Budget Committee, a group of state legislators who approve Colorado's budget, regarding CSU's skyrocketing tuition problem.

Katie Gleeson, then-president of the Associated Students of CSU; Dan Palmer, then-director of Academics for ASCSU; August Ritter, then-director of Legislative Affairs for ASCSU; and Trout pled with the committee to impose a 10 percent tuition cap on CSU after the price tag had increased 16 percent the previous year.

It worked.

After a year of squabbles between former CSU President Larry Penley -- who introduced a two-months late student fee request from the Athletics department and a last-minute budget clause that would have raised tuition by $1,200 a student -- the JBC mandated that CSU could only raise tuition by 9.5 percent.

Continued...

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