Community-student relations and student safety will be the two main concerns facing the eight Associated Student Government off-campus senators appointed Wednesday.
The senators — Medill juniors Margaux Berwitt and Ted Haller, McCormick junior Jim Lovsin, Medill sophomores Jennifer McQuiston and Lindsey Smith, Weinberg sophomore Michael Pest, Weinberg freshman Amir Siddiqui and Weinberg junior Darin Smith-Gaddis — said their mission in the fall will be to continue this year’s improvement of the often strained relationship between students and their Evanston neighbors.
“For off-campus students, I think the hardest thing is the stigma the residents have that the students are not a good part of their community,” Siddiqui said. “Hopefully, we can try to change that.”
Siddiqui is the youngest of the eight appointees chosen by ASG Rules Chairman Dan Broadwell from a pool of 10 applicants. Siddiqui said he hopes to create a “block community” program in which each neighborhood of students and Evanston residents would appoint several block leaders to oversee neighborhood relations. The idea builds off of an Undergraduate Leadership Program project about off-campus parties and resident-student relationships, he said.
The relationship between residents and students already is improving, said Lovsin, who is one of two returning off-campus senators.
University officials have organized several community coalition meetings this year where students and residents had the chance to share their concerns, Lovsin said. He said the meetings he attended were very positive with “good dialogue.”
“I’ve only been in Senate for a year, but I’ve been told that for the past couple years they’ve been bad,” he said. “Neighbors have been yelling at students and vice-versa.”
Current off-campus Sen. Meredith Kesner, a Medill senior, said she hopes next year’s off-campus senators work to protect “the 99.9 percent of off-campus students who are great neighbors and contribute to the community.”
“I think a lot of times when you focus on town-gown relations (people think) it becomes the student’s fault,” Kesner said. “That’s the way it’s painted.”
Next year’s senators said they also plan to address off-campus student safety concerns, including shuttle routes and street lighting. Lovsin said he wants to continue the work he has done this year on the shuttle service, including the possibility of adding shuttle stop signs at several off-campus locations, including the intersection of Foster Street and Orrington Avenue.
“I think definitely safety (is a concern) — getting to and from off-campus housing,” Smith said. “I mean, I’m a girl. It makes me nervous walking home at night even when I’m on campus.”
Smith said she also wants to connect off-campus students to the campus community, a goal seconded by many of her fellow future senators.
“Unfortunately I think that many people, when they go to live off campus, feel like it’s a step away from the Northwestern community,” said Haller, the other returning off-campus senator.
Although selecting the off-campus senators was difficult, Broadwell said he thought several applicants had better ideas about how to connect with off-campus students. He added that this can be hard with such a large and spread out population to represent.
“Dorm senators represent whoever’s in the dorm and Greek senators represent whoever’s in the house,” he said. “For the off-campus senators, the eight of them basically represent all of these students who live off-campus. It’s a lot harder.”
