The three candidates for academic vice president, all of whom spent the past year working with each other on the Academic Committee, tried to distinguish their platforms and personalities from one another in the first Associated Student Government debate Tuesday night.

The debate for student services vice president was canceled because of low attendance. Weinberg sophomore Whitney Gretz is running unopposed for the post.

The three AVP candidates, Jodi Anderson, Jason Downs and Andrew Xia, answered questions from ASG Election Commissioner Gabe Matlin, a fifth-year McCormick senior, and a few observers in Norris University Center’s Purdue Room. Only the candidates, a few campaign managers and two ASG election officials attended.

The candidates spent much of the debate laying out short-term goals for the Academic Committee, while also presenting their ideas on how to create greater community at Northwestern. The candidates said the committee was focused on long-term goals in the past.

Anderson and Downs agreed that the top priority for AVP should be ending students’ isolation from ASG, while Xia said he would lead the academic committee and make sure he was listening to student needs.

“Right now there is a disconnect between students and ASG,” said Downs, a Weinberg junior. “We need to make sure that students are able to voice their concerns with ASG and ASG needs to let students know what it has to offer.”

The three agreed with each other when asked what they thought was needed for ethnic and gender studies programs at NU, saying expansion was necessary.

Xia and Downs disagreed about how to build closer relationships between professors and students. Xia criticized professors for often being inaccessible to their students.

“I feel as though as lot of professors have office hours during obscure times when I have class,” said Xia, a Weinberg sophomore, who also said they rarely respond on time to student e-mails.

“Let’s just be careful about telling professors what to do,” said Downs, who wants to create sophomore seminars like those offered to freshmen to build relationships between students and professors.

Xia said because all three candidates’ platforms were similar, the best way to distinguish between them was in their leadership qualities.

“A great leader must also be a great listener,” Xia said.

All three candidates said they wanted to improve facilities in the School of Music, especially improving practice rooms. Xia said he wanted to offer private music lessons to non-music majors, which the school now offers by audition.

“Facilities are pretty bad and of course the long term solution is to make a new music building,” Downs said.

Reach Evan Hill at [email protected].