While faculty votes to establish open access (OA) policies leverage one particular campus-level democratic mechanism in the name of advancing scholarly communication, other processes, including student government actions, can also play significant roles in OA policy adoption and related efforts. As early career researchers, graduate students are particularly well-poised to engage with campus-level democratic institutions in order to bring about change in scholarly communication. This case study details a multi-year collaboration between librarians and graduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder aimed at the development and adoption of a campus OA policy.