A trio of Mercer Island High Schoolers joined a host of other student advocates on the capitol campus in Olympia on Feb. 7. With their presence on the hill, the Washington State High School Democrats urged lawmakers to vote for K-12 education and gun control legislation.

The high-school group organized the all-day event, which also involved representatives from the College Democrats of Washington and the Eastern Washington University Democrats.

Mercer Island senior Anthony Wang, the legislative chair of the high-school Dems, made the trip to the capitol along with fellow Island senior Adelaide Swenson and freshman Esha Shroff. Other advocates in the 20-student group hail from various high schools throughout the region.

Overlake School senior Vidhi Mehrotra is the group’s treasurer and helped lead the charge with Wang to meet with legislators and advocate for other bills to establish a statewide network for student mental health, and support chronically-absent students.

Wang said that their first motivation was offering student perspective and voice on the hill.

“We think that students have, honestly, the firsthand experience with mental health issues a lot of the time; with gun control legislation, both of these impact students in many, honestly, very close ways,” Wang said.

“Second was, we wanted to get students involved within the legislative process so they could see sort of how things are done in regards to passing legislation, how to speak with legislators in a way where you can get your points across,” he added.