Five months after learning of a city plan to redistrict Evanston’s nine wards, Associated Student Government leaders still are working to preserve students’ voting clout.

But unless students start to care even more about redistricting, they might not reach that goal.

At this week’s Evanston City Council meeting, about 50 students, most of them ASG members, showed up to voice their opinions, the strongest show of student regard for civic involvement in some time.

“The university as an institution philosophically believes that students should be engaged in the world around them,” said Alan Cubbage, NU’s vice president for university relations, adding that he would not speculate as to how greater student involvement might affect city politics.

Over the past few months, ASG’s External Relations chairwoman, Jane Lee, and her committee have been working to provide alternative proposals to aldermen’s new ward maps. Some proposals from city aldermen would dilute student voting power by separating on-campus students into more than two wards. The university now occupies part of the First and Seventh wards.

“Any alderman who discredits the student voice isn’t being true to his or her role as an alderman,” said Lee, a Weinberg junior.

Efforts to increase student activism include several ASG bills approved in the past two years, including one that called for the creation of two on-campus voting precincts. And this month the group made its senators deputy registrars, which gives them the ability to sign up voters.

Because of these changes, students can vote with more ease. Lee said she hopes these efforts will increase student turnout for local elections.

“Now that we have deputy registrars on campus, anyone can go up to a senator and say, ‘I want to register to vote in Evanston,'” Lee said. “In a sense it’s increasing student voice.”

But although ASG leaders have spent hours trying to promote student political involvement, some students say student voting trends will never change.

Communication sophomore Alex Glaser, a Louisiana native, said he doesn’t envision himself participating in city politics because he is only a temporary resident of Evanston.

“I don’t really see myself as a resident of Illinois,” he said. “And I feel like Northwestern is a separate entity from Evanston.”

Others said they feel too uninformed to make educated voting choices in city politics.

Adjusting to college life is enough pressure on its own without having to learn a city’s politics, said Jared Davidson, a Medill freshman, adding that he wouldn’t vote in a city election if there were one this year.

Still ASG leaders continue to encourage activism. With the City Council slated to readdress the redistricting issue at its Nov. 24 meeting, Lee said she will continue to tackle the issue.

ASG, along with the Citizens’ Ward Redistricting Committee, submitted multiple redistricting maps to the city about two weeks ago that used census technology to create accurate representations of NU and Evanston. But Lee said ASG members and other interested students will create even more map proposals, this time including Evanston’s total population.

ASG has also consulted a lawyer to determine whether age-based discrimination could factor into some aldermen’s efforts to split students into multiple wards.

ASG circulated a petition among students Sunday to gather support for student redistricting interests. As of Thursday morning, 616 students had signed the petition.

But some students said ASG’s efforts are not worth it.

“It’s futile for ASG to fight so hard when they can’t solve half the problems on our campus, let alone the town trying to redistrict us,” said Peter Kahn, a Communication sophomore.

Meanwhile, the large turnout of students at the Evanston Civic Center on Monday shows that perhaps ASG’s efforts finally are paying off.