Thursday, March 29, Students United hosted “Pizza and Politics.” Jeremy Miller, Minnesota Senator represting Winona County, was invited to come to Winona State University to talk to the students and answer questions about politics.

Miller was elected in 2010 and was sworn in as Winona’s Senator in 2011. Since then, Miller has done a lot of work with the colleges in Winona. He regularly attends meetings with the colleges around the area and works diligently on students concerns.

At the event, there was a lot of discussion about textbooks and Winona State’s tuition prices.

“The cost to educate students has been going up, but faculty [at Winona State] are becoming more open-minded on trying to help that,” Miller said.

Miller has spent a lot of time working with the cost of tuition and textbooks for college students in Winona.

“The cost of textbooks and tuition are an issue, and at the end of the day it’s about helping students save money,” Miller said. “We have a lot of smart people here at Winona State that can help with these issues.”

Winona State has a wide variety of groups and club’s students can join to help better understand campus politics. Students United and Student Senate had many representatives who attended the event.

Ben Ellgen, member of Student Senate on campus and political science major, attended the event along with many other students from Student Senate.

“I think it’s important for college students to understand politics because education policy affects how much we pay for school and how successful we are,” Ellgen said. “I am personally interested in politics because it is so influential in our everyday lives. Also, it’s really fun”.   

Miller was open to questions about anything and everything. People and Winona State students were eager to ask Miller questions from Wisconsin reciprocity, to the drug and opioid crisis across the country.

Miller was very honest if he did not know the answer when a question was asked. When asked some harder questions about the legalization of marijuana that Miller did not have the answer to, he responded honestly and offered phone numbers and names of people that could answer the questions.

“There’s not an easy answer to everything, but I am here to provide some resources that can answer them,” Miller said.

President of Winona State, Scott Olson, said Miller can be found with his family at many Winona State sporting events. Miller is a big part of the community in Winona and at Winona State.

Miller said he can often be found with his wife and children in restaurants around Winona, at the grocery store, or just out and about.

“What would be about a 15-minute grocery run turns into two hours because I’m always talking to people and listening to what they have to say about Winona,” Miller said. “For me, it’s all about representing the people.”