Let’s be honest here: Who really gives a shit about the April city elections?

Sure, you have your neurotic Daily reporters who can name off all the candidates, and your ambitious, resume-packing Associated Student Government officers saying how you should care and you should vote and you should blah, blah, blah. But how many of us relatively “normal” college students pay any attention to all the city-related crap?

I, for one, happen to think that it’s, like, totally legitimate that most Northwestern students don’t pay any attention to the Evanston City Council. We can’t relate to the aldermen, they can’t relate to us, right? I mean, really, when was the last time you saw our buddy Ald. Arthur Newman (1st) do a keg stand in some off-campus house that’s a nuisance property that probably also has an absentee landlord?

I give up.

Everything city-related is one big collage of incomprehensible technicalities and recycled screw-NU-students propaganda. Why should any student take the time or effort to decipher the bureaucratic, make-me-feel-dumb language of any ordinance unless it relates to the possession of fake IDs? Why should any student care about affordable housing in Evanston or the city’s growing gentrification?

And now, praise God, between all the bickering about elm trees and speed humps and bumps and fumps and lumps come the aldermanic elections in nine unbearably short weeks.

I can’t wait.

Sometime in the next few weeks The Daily will draw names out of a hat to determine which candidate it’ll endorse for each ward. I say: Why don’t we have a little competition among all the candidates to determine if they really can relate to NU students?

To begin with, what are the only things all NU students care about? Alcohol, sex and somewhere in the distance — so far away that you kinda hafta squint — some faint notion that we should get that $160,000 piece of biodegradable paper. (Please recycle!)

The last two are automatically disqualified because none of the aldermen is enrolled in a degree-granting program at scenic NU and also because, well, I just don’t like the idea of seeing the words “alderman” and “sex” in the same sentence. Clearly, I just failed in that last respect.

But for what’s essentially students’ No. 1 care in the world — alcohol — the solution is simple. Let’s just have all the candidates compete in a drink-off!

We’ll stick all the candidates in some overheated apartment where they can’t open the windows for fear the cops down below will hear and slap them with a noise violation. Then the lucky contestants will proceed to a table fully stocked with Hawkeye vodka, Dmitri vodka and that dodgy bottle that only says “RUM.” Double points to whoever pulls a puke-and-rally.

So, for us students, it’s all quite simple in our minds. Why should any student see the need to meet the city halfway on any issue? It’s not that hard for the city to meet us in our doorway. Who can’t down a few shots?

If that doesn’t work, then hey, Ald. Ann Rainey (8th): I’ve got a 12-pack of Guinness in my fridge with your name on it. How ’bout I invite over some of my pals (they’ll bring the keg in case you don’t fancy imports), and we’ll have a nice, intimate roundtable discussion on how the potential Oakton Historic Society might impact NU students?

P.S. I’m so totally 21 — at least according to that Nebraska ID.

Assistant City Editor Yuxing Zheng is a Medill junior. She can be reached at [email protected].