What is new with Envision Evanston? What is the Associated Student Government’s role in allocating money to new clubs? How did the women’s golf team win the national championship? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
ISABELLA JACOB: On today’s episode:
ASG Senate allocates nearly $15,000 to new student groups.
Land Use Commission recommends adoption of Envision Evanston 2045 comprehensive plan.
Women’s Golf: Northwestern wins first national championship in program history.
From The Daily Northwestern, Isabella Jacob.
VALENTINA VALCARCE: And I am Valentina Valcarce. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
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ISABELLA JACOB: First up this week, I spoke to ASG beat reporter Miguel Tsang about the recent allocation of money to new student groups on campus.
Miguel, thank you for being here.
MIGUEL TSUNG: Of course, happy to be here.
ISABELLA JACOB: Can you talk a little bit about the past ASG meeting that happened this Wednesday and what they were talking about?
MIGUEL TSANG: Yeah, so ASG Senate meets every Wednesday, but the special one about this Wednesday was that it was like the New Student Org Funding Senate or NSOF. So basically, they take all the up and coming student orgs that apply for funding, and they go over their requests and they allocate money to them. This year, they had $15,000, or almost $15,000, to allocate, and there were 22 student groups who were present. So yeah, the meeting took four hours. It was kind of long, but it was pretty productive. And I think everybody who was there, I noticed, was super passionate about what they were doing.
ISABELLA JACOB: How is this different from the main funding Senate?
MIGUEL TSANG: That one takes place this week and is even longer somehow, but the one this week is for established student orgs. The one last week was for more, like fresh ones that just started out more recently.
ISABELLA JACOB: Can you take us to the process of how these student orgs pitch and ask for more money or funds for their clubs?
MIGUEL TSANG: Each one has to prepare a little pitch to present at the meeting, and typically, they send up one or two speakers, who are good speakers and pretty persuasive, to try to get the funding that they want and the funding that they need. And they prepare a little spreadsheet with like the upper bound and lower bound request for each of the different areas they want funding for. And by areas, I mean, like this could be really anything.
The one that stood out to me the most was there was a club called the Muslim Business Student Association, and their only request was for pizza for social meetings, and they ended up getting $1,100 just for pizza. And obviously, I don’t think they’re gonna use it just on pizza, but the fact that this guy was able to pitch like $1,000 for pizza and then get it was pretty impressive to me.
ISABELLA JACOB: What type of student orgs were at this meeting?
MIGUEL TSANG: Most of the groups that were there at the meeting were like affinity groups. So you had a lot of like interest clubs for different majors and fields, but for different cultural groups. So like the Muslim Student Business Association, and then you had, like an East African Student Association.
ISABELLA JACOB: Was there a certain committee on ASG that was organizing this or who was facilitating this meeting specifically?
MIGUEL TSANG: It was everybody they took a vote as to how much they wanted to allocate for each club.
ISABELLA JACOB: So my last question is, just as the school year wraps up, what is in the near future for ASG, and how are they wrapping up the school year?
MIGUEL TSANG: I know right now they’re working on a rebrand, which I think is kind of necessary, because whenever I tell people I report on student government, they’re always like, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ And the thing I like about ASG is that they know this — they’re really aware of what the student body wants and needs, and they’re always working to adjust to that, and always working to like, cater to that, which I really appreciate about them.
ISABELLA JACOB: Miguel Tsang, thank you so much.
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VALENTINA VALCARCE: Next, I spoke to The Daily’s Design Editor Henry Frieman about the big win at the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf National Championship last Wednesday.
So, what factors do you think contributed most to Northwestern’s success this year compared to their close call in 2017?
HENRY FRIEMAN: I think NU just played a really competitive and gritty brand of golf where it didn’t let the course get too far in their heads. Whenever they made a mistake on the course, they were able to really fight back and bounce back.
And 2017 was a whole different group of golfers than it is now. So this group that currently was able to win just really put together just a string of great performances at exactly the right time.
VALENTINA VALCARCE: So match plays can be unpredictable. What stood out about Northwestern’s approach or strategy in high pressure situations, particularly in the quarterfinal against Arkansas and the final against Stanford?
HENRY FRIEMAN: Yeah, I think NU coach Emily Fletcher, when she addressed reporters on Thursday night, really hammered home the fact that NU just exhibited a power of resolve that they just continued golfing and clutch putt after clutch putt.
Lauryn Nguyen in the face of pressure, a senior golfer delivered time and time again.
Hsin Tai Lin, a freshman, from top to bottom, the squad really just excelled in all moments and just put together a really cohesive round of golf against Arkansas, and then against Oregon held their own and stayed within striking distance.
Once they got into the later rounds, they struck, and they were able to punch their tickets to the national championship.
VALENTINA VALCARCE: Hsin Tai Lin and Elise Lee, both freshmen, delivered clutch performances. What does that say about the team staff and future potential?
HENRY FRIEMAN: Yeah, it’s great that Hsin Tai Lin and Elise Lee really stepped up this week and they stepped up all season. Hsin Tai Lin specifically just has a nasty short game that’s lethal on the course. NU has an incoming freshman named Arianna Lau, who received an invitation to the prestigious Augusta National Women’s Amateur, played the master’s course, did pretty decently, so that’s another good sign.
I’d be remiss to not mention sophomore Ashley Yun, who will be a junior and then have a senior year after that, and junior Dianna Lee, who sunk the winning putt, she’ll have another year. NU could very well see themselves within contention to repeat as national championships come next May.
VALENTINA VALCARCE: How do you think this win changes the perception of NU as a national contender in women’s golf?
HENRY FRIEMAN: Emily Fletcher has been at the helm for NU for 17 years and just really, alongside assistant coach Beth Miller, just turned this program into a powerhouse. NU’s always been in that sort of realm of top competitors, however, never really all the way to the top, but this upset win over Stanford who is, without a doubt, the best team in women’s collegiate golf at the moment, really instills a belief in this program, a perception that this is a place where you can come and win a national championship, and I think the recruiting impacts, the audience impacts, all of the factors that build the program will be just further exacerbated.
I mean, Emily Fletcher went on CNN to talk about the championship win in women’s sports, and it’s a great win for NU’s women’s golf program. It’s a great win for women’s golf in general and I think NU now stands atop the women’s collegiate golf world and has a chance to stay there for quite some time.
VALENTINA VALCARCE: This is NU’s first national title in women’s golf. How has the win been received by the University?
HENRY FRIEMAN: University officials are over the moon, at least in the athletic department. Athletic director Mark Jackson was there for the win, hoisting the trophy alongside the team in Carlsbad, California, and the ’Cats returned home to a hero’s welcome in Evanston on Thursday.
They turned on the field hockey field sprinklers and just let them run wild in there, they got all soaked, and Willie the Wildcat welcomed them back and a whole contingent turned out to support them. There’s really just been such an overwhelming amount of support that the team has faced and been given throughout the past week.
VALENTINA VALCARCE: Henry, thank you so much.
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ISABELLA JACOB: Last up today, I spoke to Assistant City Editor Sophie Baker who attended the Land Use Commission meeting Wednesday, where they recommended the adoption of Envision Evanston 2045 comprehensive plan.
This plan, which provides a vision for what Evanston should look like in 20 years through policy and structural changes to the city, has been a major point of debate since it was first proposed by Mayor Daniel Biss last year.
ISABELLA JACOB: To start off, can you talk a little bit about what happened at the Land Use Commission meeting this past Wednesday, and what was voted on?
SOPHIE BAKER: So the Land Use Commission, for the past couple of months, has been doing kind of line edits on the Envision Evanston some comprehensive plan, because the Comprehensive Plan was split from the zoning overhaul in January. So on Wednesday, they had to make a recommendation to City Council to basically decide whether they thought council should adopt the comprehensive plan or not. And so on Wednesday, in a 7-1 vote, they basically recommended that City Council adopt Envision Evanston with the changes that they had made.
ISABELLA JACOB: What were some of the changes that were made?
SOPHIE BAKER: I think they spent basically many meetings, kind of going through the entire document and making wording changes throughout. I guess the main kind of point of tension was in the way that the plan had addressed housing. There’s been this whole conversation about whether the plan should encourage housing density or not, and there’s been pushback from the community that they don’t want the character of Evanston to be disrupted.
And there was line, there was wording in the second draft, and in the initial draft, it kind of pushed for increased housing density. And that kind of stemmed in the second draft, but (was) still there. They had changed this one specific directive that had encouraged an increase of housing density to something that said, “increase and preserve Evanston’s housing stock.” And that was kind of a point of contention, because some commissioners said that those two words, like increase and preserve were contradictory, and others had said that that more accurately reflected the community feedback that they had received up until that point.
ISABELLA JACOB: So there was one dissenting vote made by (Commissioner) Brian Johnson. Can you talk a little bit about that and why he dissented?
SOPHIE BAKER: So that was also somewhat related to the housing section. So he had wanted to see that those words “increase” and “preserve” incorporated throughout the housing chapter. So he basically said, if that didn’t happen, that there were internal inconsistencies in the document, because there were a bunch of other instances where it just said, like increase housing stock, as opposed to increase and preserve or increase just like increase something generally relating to housing.
And so the commissioners changed one specific policy directive, but they didn’t change everything in the plan, or in the rest of that housing chapter, so Commissioner Johnson basically said that he wouldn’t support it because of those internal inconsistencies.
He had a couple of other reasons — he had said early in the meeting that he wanted to see more like what he called “context” around points of data. So basically, if they had mentioned Evanston’s population density, he wanted to see that in reference to other comparable cities and other comparable municipalities in Illinois, so not to just have this point of data out of context and they hadn’t ultimately made that change, or recommended that they make that change. So I think there were numerous reasons, but the main one he cited was internal inconsistencies in the plan.
ISABELLA JACOB: There is a line in the article that said a summary of initial community survey results said white respondents were less positive about integration. Can you talk a little bit about that? Is there past controversy surrounding that?
SOPHIE BAKER: I think this is just a misrepresentation of what the community had said. When I read that line, I thought racial integration. And I think the commissioners kind of read that as well, and were like, ‘Oh, that’s not what people said.’ It wasn’t in reference to racial integration. It was more in reference to the way that new development was going to be incorporated into existing design. So the integration aspect was that new development into existing neighborhoods, which I think they amended.
They just basically altered the phrase to more accurately reflect their understanding of residents’ concerns, which was integrating new developments into existing neighborhoods, not anything to do with racial integration.
ISABELLA JACOB: So now that the plan is going to City Council, what can we see is next for Envision Evanston and what’s in the near future?
SOPHIE BAKER: So it’s not going to be in front of council at their next meeting on Tuesday, at least, that’s what we were told on Wednesday. But the way that council normally does it is that they’ll have a measure up for introduction one day, and then the next council meeting, it’ll be up for action if it’s passed for introduction, and there’ll be discussion about whether they want to adopt it. I think they may have suggested that it might be a longer process, and I wouldn’t be surprised, just because it’s been such a contentious thing, but basically, it should go to City Council and they’ll discuss it, and they’ll decide whether to adopt it, and then after that, they’ll start a zoning discussion further down the road.
ISABELLA JACOB: Sophie Baker, thank you so much.
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ISABELLA JACOB: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Hari Osofsky to step down as Pritzker Law School dean.
Lacrosse: No. 3 Northwestern falls 12-8 to No. 1 North Carolina in national championship.
Biss announces first round of endorsements in congressional bid.
and
One Book One Northwestern ‘on hiatus’ for 2025-26 academic year.
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VALENTINA VALCARCE: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Valentina Valcarce.
ISABELLA JACOB: And I’m Isabella Jacob.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Valentina Valcarce, Isabella Jacob, Sophie Baker, Miguel Tsang and Henry Frieman and produced by Isabella Jacob and Valentina Valcarce.
The Audio Editor is Isabella Jacob. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Anavi Prakash, Misha Manjuran Oberoi, and Danny O’Grady. The Editor in Chief is Lily Ogburn.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke For Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
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