Northwestern’s Associated Student Government may assist the Center for Student Involvement in funding the first Northwestern Day at Chicago’s United Center.
CSI’s NU Day at the United Center during Winter Quarter would be similar to the spring tradition hosted by the Northwestern Class Alliance at Wrigley Field but likely on a smaller scale. CSI is attempting to set aside $20,000 to subsidize tickets for the event, pay for student transportation and provide T-shirts to attendees.
ASG discussed legislation Wednesday that would allocate $1,000 from the Senate Project Pool to fund the event. The legislation was moved to old business, and the Senate will vote on it next week.
Brad Stewart, ASG vice president, said CSI was trying to gain funding from many campus groups, including the Residence Hall Association. Stewart said the funding from ASG would determine the number of tickets CSI is able to reserve for NU students. Currently, he explained, the group is planning to come up with 300 student tickets.
“Ultimately, it’s the Senate’s decision,” Stewart said. “I think this will be a fun event for the Northwestern community regardless of ASG’s involvement.”
In addition to proposing funding for NU Day at the United Center, ASG voted to pass a resolution to acknowledge the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy and encourage students to donate to organizations running relief efforts, such as the American Red Cross.
“It’s a sign of our support,” ASG president Victor Shao said. “We represent the entirety of the student body, and this is an event that impacted a lot of us.”
Shao said he hoped the resolution, which will be blasted to students through social media and email lists, will remind students to get in touch with their family members or friends who may have been affected. He added that he would not be surprised if the resolution made way for fundraising efforts. Shao said he plans to discuss the possibility of an institutional response when he meets Friday with Patricia Telles-Irvin, NU’s vice president for student affairs.
Some members of ASG had personal motivations for passing the resolution. Weinberg junior Michael Morgan, who serves as an off-campus senator, is from Long Island, N.Y. He said his Facebook news feed has been filled with pictures and videos of the damage caused by Sandy in his hometown. While his own home has not been damaged, many homes in his neighborhood, which was in a mandatory evacuation zone, have been destroyed.
“I think it’s important to get the message out,” Morgan said. “Something as little as one or five dollars can help so much.”
Morgan explained the flooding and following electrical fires in his hometown has created a projected $5 billion of property damage.
“Long Island is just one part of this, too,” Morgan said. “There’s a ton of students impacted, directly and indirectly.”
Before discussing the Hurricane Sandy resolution and NU Day at the United Center, student life vice president Alex Van Atta and a working group formed last spring to investigate the University’s alcohol policy presented their research and their recommendations to improve the drinking culture and policies at NU. Their research relied primarily on comparison to peer institutions and anecdotal evidence from students.
Van Atta said the group is planning to distribute a campus wide survey about alcohol use by the end of the quarter. He said the survey will explore how much students know about the current alcohol policy and if it has prevented them from calling for help in dangerous drinking situations.
Van Atta said ASG needs to compile its own data on drinking following a lack of cooperation from the administration in releasing their own information on student drinking. Van Atta said in a meeting with Lisa Currie, director of health promotion and wellness, she showed him data about campus drinking but declined to give him a copy of it because of concerns about how campus media may manipulate it.
“That kind of leads us to believe they value image over the safety of the students,” Van Atta said in his presentation to the Senate.
The Senate then elected members to two working groups, which will focus on improving transportation and dorm conditions at NU. The transportation group will focus on improving the shuttle system and will also work with SafeRide to potentially improve the service’s technology, which Shao referred to as “outdated.” The dorm conditions working group elected three members, who referenced their own experiences living in dorms such as North Mid-Quads Hall and Sargent Hall.
