“I used to bartend in Belmont, and one night I was coming home and this guy jumped me,” Anna Xu said. “Long story short, I beat him up pretty badly. That was empowering. It’s really funny, because I was really scared when I got back to campus, and I filed a police report and everything. The police got back to me – The guy was in the hospital.”
The unimposing Texan said she doesn’t bartend anymore, partly because of that night, but she is brushing up on her martial arts by taking a kung fu class in Evanston. She is also one of three candidates running for academic vice president in Tuesday’s Associated Student Government elections.
The McCormick sophomore, who is on ASG’s Academic Committee, said she wants to make the committee’s activities more transparent and successful. Those activities include creating an extracurricular activities transcript and an extended break for students from Thanksgiving through Christmas.
“If you’re persistent and you don’t let the administration intimidate you and you keep students interested, changes can be made,” she said. “There’s no other way around it. If there were it would’ve been done already.”
Most students aren’t aware of these ideas going through the Academic Committee because they don’t know such changes are possible, Xu said. A Web site and “office hours” would help change that.
“I feel like the general student population doesn’t always take ASG very seriously, and part of that is because ASG is so non-transparent about what they’re doing,” she said.
She said she realized the communication gap between ASG and students after becoming a CA in Bobb Hall this year and talking to underclassmen who weren’t fully aware of student government.
Xu’s former roommate, SESP sophomore Cortney Jones, said Xu was educating people about ASG long before she was a CA.
“She’d sit there and rant to me (after meetings) about different debates,” Jones said. “She was always talking to the dorm, since that’s who she represented (in Senate), about different issues and how to get them involved.”
Xu is also a member of Kappa Delta. One of her sorority sisters and former ASG colleagues, Communication sophomore Dena Oaklander, said Xu had many skills that would help her succeed.
“I think Anna definitely has a good chance of winning,” Oaklander said. “She’s involved in a lot of diverse activities. She’s a very outgoing person. She has a lot of friends who would definitely support her.”
Jones said she had a similar opinion.
“I know she’s wanted to move up in ASG,” she said. “What’s nice about Anna is that, as far as the other candidates for that office go, she’s much more approachable and open to discussion about her platform. Other people see that too. She has a lot of friends, and word-of-mouth can be powerful.”
Reach Nitesh Srivastava at [email protected].
