Elections lacked female candidate
The year’s Associated Student Government elections were some of the most exciting we’ve had in years. They included all of the ingredients of an exciting vote – diverse candidates, aggressive campaigning and highly-contested races. But one thing was missing: the ladies.
In the race for President, Executive Vice President, Student Services Vice Presidents and Academic Vice President, there were 10 candidates, not one of whom was female. Of the 40 ASG senators in office, only 15 are women and five of those represent the Panhellenic Association. The ASG Executive Board itself is 75 percent male, and two of its three female members were appointed by the ASG president.
The trend is nothing new. In the last 38 years, ASG has only seen eight female presidents. The heads of the Senate, including the Clerk, Parliamentarian and Speaker, have also been all males for the past five years, save for one lone female.
What gives? Why, at a university where 53 percent of the presidents of the A-list student groups and half the student body are female, are zero percent of the ASG candidates female?
But one candidate came close. SESP junior Jessica Klein considered running for ASG president and changed her ming two weeks before Spring Break. Her reasons for withdrawing had nothing to do with feeling intimidated about leading a male-dominated group. If anything, Klein said she hoped being the only female candidate would boost her campaign. When she withdrew her candidacy, she said, several students and faculty approached her, sharing their disappointment in the lack of females on the ballot.
NU is not alone. In the past 10 years, Princeton University has had one female student government president and University of Pennsylvania has had two in the past 18 years. At Yale University, the current president is the first female in seven years.
It is surprising that a school with a female majority and a surplus of female leaders struggles to put those women in office. Perhaps that is something our next ASG President can look into changing. NU keeping up with wireless
By promising to provide all on-campus residences with wireless Internet access by next fall, Northwestern is keeping up with the times.
Other nearby schools like the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois do not have wireless in dorms, though both have initiated programs to investigate the possibility installing Wi-Fi. Of the top 25 “Most Connected Campuses” complied by Forbes.com and The Princeton Review, several do not have wireless in their residential halls.
Getting wireless access in dorms has been a priority for NU students since 2001, according to polls conducted by the University Budget Priorities Committee. Enabling students to ditch their Ethernet chords may also improve NU’s image in the eyes of prospective students. Tour guides can now answer their wireless inquiries with a brighter response.
If the university follows through on its promise, NU will take a significant step in the increasingly high-tech field of higher education. To become a leader however, the school will need to continue improving technology by increasing connection speed, revamping data networks and investigating more multimedia options.
