About 50 freshmen are hanging out in the Elder Hall lounge waiting for munchies.
Before they can get to the stacked boxes of cheese and pepperoni pizza, they must listen to campaign pitches from six candidates running for Associate Student Government president.
Five of the candidates, dressed in suits and ties or skirts, lay out their platforms and remind the freshmen to vote for them. The sixth — Weinberg junior Brandon Conrad — stands up in jeans and keeps his speech short and simple. First, he laments that the freshmen have to wait through the speeches to get to the pizza.
Then he offers a quick summary of his goals.
“I feel like ASG can be used to make Northwestern more fun, not restrict student groups and be annoying,” he said.
Conrad, whose platform can be boiled down most simply to “school spirit,” said he is annoyed with the conventional campaign methods of other candidates. He doesn’t want to walk around dining halls, begging strangers for their vote. He said he will run his campaign through word of mouth and through his extensive network of friends.
“I’m not one of the candidates that’s going to sit at The Arch and come up to everyone and say, ‘Hey, I’m Brandon. I’d really love your vote,'” Conrad said. “I’d rather lose than have to suck up and be annoying to every stranger.”
Conrad plans to improve school spirit by encouraging students to attend more athletic events, speakers, concerts and theater productions. He also wants to make ASG more visible through weekly briefings and improve relations between students and the Evanston Police Department.
Conrad’s campaign manager said Conrad developed a simple platform on purpose.
“Brandon really only wants to focus on two or three items that would make ASG a stronger group,” said Julius Marchwicki, a McCormick senior. “We’re really not here to create a president who wants to accomplish 35 things in a year, which we think is impossible.”
Marchwicki added that Conrad, who was president of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity last year, is running as an ASG outsider and is going for the Greek vote. But Conrad said that although he can represent the Greek community well, he does not see NU as made up of politicized units.
Conrad said he’d like to create a sense of community on campus by sponsoring tailgates to athletic events at Ryan Field and establishing a “purple points” system that rewards students who attend the most events.
Priya Patel, who served on the executive board of OASIS with Conrad, said she feels he would make a good student leader.
“It doesn’t seem that he is involved in (running for president) just to be in ASG,” said Patel, a Weinberg junior. “Since he volunteers a lot it seems like he really wants to help the community and the campus.”
Reach Julia Neyman at [email protected].
