At the Evanston town hall meeting Jan. 25 concerning the enforcement of the “brothel law,” Associated Student Government off-campus senator Reed Wilson said he realized the severity of the negative portrayal of Northwestern students by websites such as Gawker, as well as by the Evanston community.
Wilson, along with ASG vice president Hiro Kawashima and ASG technology vice president Michael Jan, launched a new website NUandYou.com as a way to highlight the positive things NU students have done for Evanston.
The website consists of submissions from Northwestern students about the ways they have positively contributed to the Evanston community, said Wilson. The site went live after last Wednesday’s ASG Senate meeting.
Wilson, a Weinberg senior, said he had the idea for a while as a spin-off of President Barack Obama’s and ASG’s websites that profiled the positive things they had done for their target audiences.
“Why don’t we just take that idea and kind of spin it to market it more toward Evanstonians and say, here are stories of real Northwestern students that have done things for the community,” Wilson said.
Wilson said an initial post included a story about a friend who helped a mother and son look for their lost dog for 30 minutes.
Along with the submission about the lost dog, there are numerous submissions about volunteer work NU students have done for the Evanston community through Campus Kitchens, local libraries and more.
Kawashima said ASG has not publicized the site much, but uses off campus-related Facebook pages and events to get the word out.
Kawashima said he thinks relations between NU students and the City of Evanston have worsened over the last couple of years. NU students living off-campus have received a lot of media attention in recent months due to resident complaints of student partying and noise violations, as well as criticism of the city’s “brothel law” housing ordinance.
Kawashima said ASG does not plan to spend too much time marketing the site and plans to just leave it as something that has the potential to go viral on its own. Once the site resolves a few technical bugs, Wilson said he would like to have it on the Evanston homepage and other websites to reach out to the Evanston community.
“We got national attention basically for having a few cups on the ground, and state schools have much worse ‘partying’ than we do probably,” Wilson said. “But for whatever reason, that’s what people choose to pay attention to, this negative image of us. (We are) just thinking of ways that we could proliferate a positive image and bring to light all the positive things that Northwestern students do for the community of Evanston and that it’s really just a handful of people that are the ones partying or making loud noise or trashing laws.”
Weinberg senior Kolby White is involved with the Evanston community through her position as Northwestern Community Development Corps special events co-chair, a position that includes planning community events such as Senior Gala, Project Pumpkin and Arts Fest. White said she is not sure whether she would post her own submissions on NUandYOU.com but thinks it is a great idea.
“I definitely think the idea behind it is very important for improving the town-gown relationships with Northwestern,” she said. “I definitely think there’s a different vibe to Northwestern students than what the Evanston community always sees.”
