By Talia AlbertsPLAY Writer
While the rest of the school has spent the week celebrating Halloween or studying with friends, two Northwestern sophomores have been living in a car for four days. SESP sophomore Neals Sales-Griffin and McCormick sophomore Mario Montes Sujo are competing in the Chevrolet Aveo “Livin’ Large” Campus Challenge in hopes of each winning a 2007 Chevrolet Aveo. They have to live in the car for five days, with 10-minute bathroom breaks every two hours and only time to leave for class. To support these two and represent Northwestern, you can go online and vote for them at www.aveolivinlarge.com. PLAY went by to visit the two and spent a little bit of time in the car to see what was happening behind the wheel.
PLAY: How did you get involved in this competition?
Neal Sales-Griffin: I heard about it through an e-mail, and then they actually asked me to send it over the listserv because I’m the president of CCI. I thought it was pretty interesting because you can win a car and that’s not a bad deal and so I was like, “OK, let me sign up for this.”
PLAY: What is the biggest or most surprising challenge you have encountered living in a car?
Mario Montes Sujo: Right now it’s exposure, we’re doing so bad in votes right now compared to the other schools. I know (Northwestern) is a small school against these big schools, but still it seems like we have people coming by all the time that don’t know what’s going on – so we need to get the word out.
PLAY: If you could own any car in the world which car would it be?
MS: I would have a Pragani Zonda F it’s about $800,000 and it’s a beautiful car.
NS: I would just have whatever the most expensive car in the world is because I would just sell it and keep the money.
PLAY: How do you plan to win?
MS: By getting the word out, and by getting everybody’s friends to vote and their friends to vote and their family to vote and then even cats and dogs to vote, we just need everybody to vote!
NS: Well, since morale is real low I just sent an e-mail out to everyone everywhere to try and create some mass flyering team. It seems like a lot of Northwestern people are apathetic and they don’t like to get involved in this type of stuff. It’s a big deal so what we’re trying to do is spark their interest again towards the end of the week because we really need to pull something out of our you-know-whats in order to win this. So yeah, that’s basically what I’m trying to focus on right now.
PLAY: What’s the first thing you’re going to do once you get out of the car?
MS: It’s going to be Friday night, so I want to go out. Sleep actually, sleep in a bed.
NS: I want to sleep in a bed, yeah, that’s a pretty big deal. Then I’m going to try to get back to reality because I’ve been kind of separated from everything I’m involved in around here.
– Talia Alberts
