Nearly every college student has wondered at one time or another what “the real world” is like, but few Northwestern students have ever wondered about Evanston’s city budget.
When living in the ivory tower, it is natural to have a dreamy curiosity about the doings of those outside it. But how many actually make the effort to get up and look out the window? More than once I have heard NU referred to as “a bubble.”
Change that to “warm, cozy, velveteen bubble” and it is an appropriate designation. Our campus’s neatly mowed lawns and pruned trees provide the perfect backdrop for our oh-so-busy lives filled with classes and parties, books and beer.
Just west of Sheridan Road is the real world, and I have not found many people who are truly interested in it. Evanston is not the shape of reality for most NU students. One friend of mine referred to it as “an unfriendly puritan-fascist community.”
For most, Evanston is an unfortunate part of the deal that comes with NU. I have no doubt there are students out there who imagine the real world and in their next thought wonder why The Daily wastes so much ink and space on Evanston City Council meetings. After all, who cares?
This brings me back to the city budget. In the next two months, we are going to write a lot about the budget and the grinding, arduous process to develop it. This may mystify some who, while wandering in the halls of the ivory tower, have failed to notice that despite its shiny downtown Evanston is locked in a terrible financial crisis. Evanston has had economic difficulties for some time. But the problem is worse than usual this year because of the recession and the unexpected legal costs incurred by the city while fighting several lawsuits, including one from NU.
The city faces a $3.6 million deficit, and no easy way exists to fix the problem. Consequently, the budget proposed this year by City Manager Roger Crum contains significant cuts to the social services Evanston residents have come to expect.
From inside the bubble, none of this may look like a big deal. Getting excited about the budget is difficult unless one is directly affected by it. The 450-page document can seem like an irrelevant, boring tome filled with facts and figures completely divorced from the real world. But in fact, the budget is the essence of reality. It governs what services will and will not be available in Evanston for the next year, thus shaping the community’s quality of life.
For example, if the council approves cutting $119,000 from the Evanston Public Library’s budget, both the North and South branches of the library will close. Residents who live in those neighborhoods will no longer be able to walk to the library. Try telling those people the budget does not matter.
Clearly, money does not just talk. It defines. Some student leaders may get an education in this if they choose to follow a suggestion from Ald. Arthur Newman (1st) and attend weekly budget workshops. Associated Student Government President Jordan Heinz, Student Services Vice President Courtney Brunsfeld and leaders from For Members Only and Panhellenic Association met with Newman at the beginning of December to ask the city for better off-campus lighting. If they take his suggestion, no doubt they will find they are just one more voice begging for funds from an ever-smaller pot of cash.
And that, if you choose to look outside the tower, is the real world.
