What is the 9th Congressional District Race looking like? How is the NU-Qatar campus handling the Iranian missile strikes? What was covered in the BridgeNU debate between college Democrats and Republicans? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
GABE HAWKINS: On this week’s episode: With over a week until election day, the race to replace U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Evanston) is heating up, how fallout from the United States’ military intervention in Iran is impacting Northwestern’s Qatar campus and a debate between Northwestern political groups.
[music]
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Gabe Hawkins.
EMERSON LEGER: And I’m Emerson Leger. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
GABE HAWKINS: First, I spoke with The Daily’s Data Visualizations Editor Ryan Ottignon to discuss their reporting on polling for Illinois’ 9th Congressional District election.
Thank you so much for joining me. You reported on a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling and commissioned by the Evanston RoundTable, which found that 22% of voters are undecided in the race to replace Jan Schakowsky in Congress. Why is that number striking to you?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Usually when we are looking at these polls, we’re looking at who’s winning, who’s falling behind, and the difficulty here is that because Public Policy Polling only talked to about 501 likely primary voters, they had a margin of error that was about 4.4%. So, all three of the front-runners, (Kat) Abughazaleh, (Daniel) Biss and (Laura) Fine were within the margin of error.
It was conducted about a month out from this primary, and that is a rather high amount of people who might fall into any of the three buckets or any of the non-frontrunning candidates. What was also interesting to me is that we were able to get a first look at who exactly these undecided voters are.
GABE HAWKINS: The poll also found that Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss is leading the pack as a front-runner, but content creator Kat Abughazaleh and State Senator Laura Fine closely trail him and also fall within the margin of first place. What does this poll show about who they’re targeting and how well these candidates are doing within those demographics?
RYAN OTTIGNON: Well, we can break this down by different categories. Public Policy Polling released cross-tabs, so how many people voted for Kat and was also within the age range of 18 to 45, for instance. It’s these kinds of overlapping sections, and we can tell from that, that Kat, for instance, is very publicly targeting Gen Z voters, younger voters, and she’s rather successfully doing that. She has about 30% of that electorate on her side.
Fine, on the other hand, is targeting older voters, and she’s successfully doing that to an extent, but she’s also rather strongly being contested by Biss, and you could also see who they’re targeting. Fine is rather strongly looking towards these suburban voters that are outside of the Cook County bounds in Lake and McHenry County, and then moving towards the city as her point of focus.
[music]
GABE HAWKINS: Ryan Ottignon, thank you.
EMERSON LEGER: Next, I’m here with Daily reporter Summer Hu to talk about Northwestern University in Qatar’s switch to remote operations in response to Iranian missile and drone strikes in the Middle East.
Can you walk listeners through what happened and why Northwestern University in Qatar had the shelter in place?
SUMMER HU: As many know, the United States and Israel conducted a joint military operation in Iran. And in response, Iran launched retaliatory strikes on U.S. bases, and now as it’s developing, they’ve targeted other locations throughout Gulf Arab states. One of the notable locations that was targeted was Tehran.
But the main thing that’s affecting NU-Q students right now is the fact that Iran, in their retaliatory strikes, one of the places that they targeted was a U.S. military base in Qatar, and that military base, according to Google Maps, is about 16 miles away from the NU-Qatar campus. And so students reported seeing the missile strikes in the sky. They reported hearing loud noises from it.
We talked to another student that felt the windows and the walls vibrate as the strikes were happening. And so they’re really kind of in the midst of the retaliatory strikes that have been going on. They have to shelter in place because NU-Q, that’s what they recommended.
But also, that’s in accordance with Qatari national authorities, who issued several national emergency alerts throughout the week. Students were first notified of the shelter in place through an alert NU message that was released when the strikes were happening, and they received several instances of correspondence and emails from in NU-Q, and then also, on top of that, National Emergency authorities with the alerts.
EMERSON LEGER: What kinds of messages or other concerns were the students sharing with you?
SUMMER HU: I think again, a lot of uncertainty regarding the procedures. I mean, now, as the conflict has progressed, there’s been more information released, but at the time when they were first starting, there wasn’t very much communication as to a potential evacuation plan, what was going to happen. I mean, all they were told was to shelter in place in that there were some resources, such as the Qatar Foundation, which funds NU-Q. They provided free Iftar meals for Muslim students. But overall, there’s just uncertainty. People didn’t know what were the next steps.
On Wednesday, Dean Marwan Kraidy, who’s also the CEO of NU Qatar, got on a webinar with students from a NU-Q to kind of talk about what the University’s plans are going forward at the moment. A lot of students had questions regarding evacuation. Would there be evacuation protocols or anything? And the University’s response was that they would not be declaring assisted departure, which meant that they would not be helping students evacuate at the moment. I mean, students can evacuate if they want to, but that’s at their own risk.
However, he did say that they did have a plan in place just in case, but they are not going to declare it at the moment. He also talked a lot about just different resources that students can go to. Qatar is well stocked with commodities like water, so we reassured students of that, as well. For students who work at NU-Q, students told us that they would be supported, or financially supported by 1000 Qatari riyals, because a lot of work has had to stop, so students are getting kind of financially supported in that way. NU-Q is just like actively communicating with authorities and just Qatar Foundation to kind of further provide update if needed. But that webinar was kind of the way to address student concerns and questions.
EMERSON LEGER: Overall, what should people on the Evanston campus understand about what the Qatar students are experiencing right now?
SUMMER HU: I think that it’s important to remember that we are all one community, and we are all Northwestern students, regardless of distance. I think that can be kind of hard, especially between the different campuses. You can sometimes feel that disconnectedness, but I think in this time, it’s really important to remember that we are a community and that we should support and be here for one another.
[music]
EMERSON LEGER: Thank you, Summer, for joining me on The Weekly.
SUMMER HU: Thank you for having me.
EMERSON LEGER: Since my conversation with Summer, The Daily reported that NU-Q will be conducting optional assisted bus departures to Saudi Arabia starting Wednesday. For more information on this development, visit dailynorthwestern.com.
GABE HAWKINS: I’ll now be joined by Assistant Campus Editor Riq Ahmed, who reported on a lively debate between college Democrats and Republicans last week.
Thank you so much for being here, Riq.
RIQ AHMED: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
GABE HAWKINS: So last week, you reported on the BridgeNU debate between college Democrats and Republicans, which covered the MAGA movement, U.S. NATO membership and immigration enforcement. What was your core takeaway from the event?
RIQ AHMED: I think my core takeaway from the event was that while the students who were debating disagreed and had different opinions, they were largely civil about it, and they were able to articulate their opinions. I think the audience was really large, and that was a testament to how excited people were to see different people debating on stage.
GABE HAWKINS: Are there any topics the group didn’t address that surprised you?
RIQ AHMED: The topics were predetermined, but I think it would have been interesting if they had talked about things on campus, specifically the research funding freeze, that ended with the deal between the Trump administration and Northwestern and just maybe other similar instances across the country at other higher education universities. So, I think that would have been interesting, but I do think the three that they covered were very timely and covered things that were newsworthy.
GABE HAWKINS: Can you tell me a little bit about some of the audience reactions?
RIQ AHMED: Yeah, so at the beginning, the BridgeNU leaders instructed the audience to refrain from any interruptions and to be civil, and they largely were. But there were moments where there were laughs or cheers for certain statements or ideas throughout the debate, and it was pretty clear that there were a lot of students there to see the debaters on stage, and I think in general there were a lot of people there as well.
GABE HAWKINS: Thank you so much, Riq.
RIQ AHMED: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
EMERSON LEGER: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Biss briefs House committee on refusal to clear 2024 encampment
Associated Student Government co-presidents-elect talk election and future goals in Q&A
Comeback bid fails late as Northwestern Men’s Basketball falls to Minnesota
And NU dance team channels Deeva energy and, takes 1st at Iowa competition
From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Emerson Leger.
GABE HAWKINS: And I’m Gabe Hawkins.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Emerson Leger, Gabe Hawkins, Ryan Ottignon, Summer Hu, and Riq Ahmed and produced by Emerson Leger.
The Audio Editor is Ruby Dowling. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Femi Horrall, Yong-Yu Huang and Jonah McClure. The Editor in Chief is Emily Lichty.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke for Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
Follow us on X and Instagram @thedailynu.
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— The Weekly: Putting Assets to Work meeting, opioid overdose resources, hearing in Abughazaleh protest case
