Even as he sat in the lounge of his former dorm, the Public Affairs Residential College, past midnight on Monday, Associated Student Government Academic Vice President Mike McGee was still animated. To punctuate his rapid words, the Communication junior gesticulated forcefully, his hands landing on the couch cushions with heavy thuds. Every few minutes he had to readjust his glasses; he was moving so quickly.
He was talking about how he doesn’t want to be regarded as impersonal as he campaigns for ASG president.
“What I don’t want to do is be seen as explicitly asking for your vote, saying ‘Hey, I’m Mike McGee – vote for me and thanks, bye,'” McGee said. “My fear is that (students) don’t ask the questions that matter.”
McGee’s campaign manager, Miles Drummond, first met McGee when they lived in PARC together, when McGee was the residential college’s social chairman. Drummond said it was McGee’s attentiveness to his concerns that first brought him to his attention.
“It wasn’t just that he was on the executive board and would answer you,” the Communication junior said. “He’d really get involved, say ‘You should go here, you should do this before you leave Northwestern.'”
The campaign’s platform, which consists of continuing current ASG initiatives such as installing GPS monitors in shuttles and improving alcohol safety on campus, reflects his desire to build off existing projects, McGee said.
He said he questioned the need to try and introduce new policies in the middle of a campaign.
“Is it new for the sake of new?” he asked. “Or is it to say hey, we want to get these things done for students?”
According to McGee, his most important accomplishments have been in establishing the Northwestern Undergraduate Research Database, a Web site which compiles research opportunities from different departments; the Peer Academic Link, another site where students have written custom profiles for each major; and the fall advising fair, which brought academic advisers from all NU’s schools to talk to undecided students.
What these initiatives had in common was applying new effort to centralize information with minimum expense, McGee said.
“There was nothing before when I ran; they had no major initiatives in the past couple years,” McGee said. “Going back to the research database, providing student profiles, that all cost nothing and that all was based off of creative solutions for students by students.”
The work he has performed in ASG won him the support of his running mate, ASG Operations Director Thomas Smithburg, as well as Student Groups Director Vikram Karandikar, Student Services Director Nate Perkins and former ASG Treasurer Claire Lew, all of whom were present at his campaign’s PARC kickoff meeting.
Smithburg, a Weinberg junior, said McGee’s work had impressed him to the point that he was urging him to run for president all Winter Quarter.
“He’s got the kind of energy that motivates other people to work harder, to get more things done, like not many people can,” Smithburg said.
Karandikar said while he didn’t work with McGee directly on projects, he was able to draw frequently on McGee’s prior two years of experience with ASG, including in the executive committee that he oversees.
“I think it’s very refreshing for someone who has been on my committee to have the perspective of a new position and can come back and talk to me about those things,” the McCormick junior said.
As for his work outside ASG, which has included being For Members Only’s graduate liason, a peer advisor during Wildcat Welcome and a host for prospective students, McGee said his work has been focused on using his experience at NU to inform others.
“I don’t want students to make the same mistakes that I did,” he said. “I take pride in emptying my brain of all the information I know, because why keep it all to myself?”
Related: Guide to ASG candidatesVideo: Mike McGee and Tommy Smithburg: Candidate for ASG president and vice president
