The minute you step into the legislative building in Washington’s state capital, the voices of hundreds of students, politicians, and administrators bounce from marble wall to marble wall. The building was jam packed with students all there for one cause.

People crowded every floor of the three-story building all with a voice that they needed the state to hear. As politicians and administrators were standing at the podium and speaking, students were waving signs and chanting slogans for all to hear.

The main areas of focus is redefining basic education as K-14, EBT on campuses, textbook affordability, and finding new revenue sources for higher education.

A total of 34 different community colleges with roughly 700-800 students and faculty filed into the main area of the Capitol building. Several speakers including Robert Lasker, Debrena Jackson Gandy, and other school and regional officials spoke to the crowd on several of the topic at hand.

“We have a couple different things that we are standing for today. One is stable cost of tuition and not raising the rates on student loans, in order to make education affordable for all students,” Trent Reid, Clover Park Technical College, said. “Another thing is EBT, electronic food stamps, available on campus. Right now there are a lot of limitations of EBT usage. We believe if the lowered income students would be able to use EBT to get lunch on campus making it easier for them to attend school.”

Redefining basic education from K-12 to K-14 would help students be more prepared for the work force. Today, just a basic high school education barely gets your foot into the door in many corporations. Redefining it to K-14 will help distribute funds for basic education to assist students.

Not everyone was happy with the way the rally went. Several students spoke up and said their voices were not heard.

“I am disappointed by the rally because I didn’t hear the voice of the students. I didn’t see the students being represented here I saw politicians talking, I saw other people from other organization’s talking but I didn’t hear the most important part,” Carlos Hernandez, Seattle Central Student.“If we a saying this is a rally for listening to the concern of the students then why do we need to listen to politicians that we already heard from before. We should hear from the students about what the students want.”

After the rally, students were released to visit things around the capital.

“We encouraged students to make appointments with their legislators and get involved,” Lasker said about activities after the rally.