The Weekly: Northwestern’s new president, the 54th Dillo Day and Evanston Township High School’s Commencement

Emerson Leger, Assistant Audio Editor

May 26, 2026

The Daily Northwestern · The Weekly: Northwestern’s new president, the 54th Dillo Day and Evanston Township High School’s Commencement

EMERSON LEGER: Last week, The Daily reported on Northwestern’s new president, Mung Chiang, the 54th Dillo Day and Evanston Township High School’s Commencement celebrating the Class of 2026.

From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Emerson Leger. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.

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EMERSON LEGER: I’m here with Campus Editor Desiree Luo to talk about new President Mung Chiang. Desiree, can you, to start, talk about what stood out most to you about Mung Chiang during the interview?

DESIREE LUO: The first thing that stood out to me about him was that he had a very, very firm handshake. I think it’s probably one of the firmest handshakes I’ve ever come across, so that definitely set the tone for the interview a bit. He seemed very open to answering questions during the interview, and he talked a lot about how he’s ready to embrace NU. But I will say I think more so than his actual answers to the questions, it was his overall demeanor, not just in interacting with me, but also interacting with other students in Allison (Dining Commons), that really stood out. And that includes having a slice of pizza over the interview, getting ice cream and, like I said, the firm handshake that shows he’s very ready to meet people at NU.

EMERSON LEGER: What do you think this interview reveals about the direction NU may take under Chiang’s leadership?

DESIREE LUO: That’s a good question. If you read the interview, I asked him a few questions about his engineering background, and also his work with AI. I also mentioned to him, and he knows this, that our incoming provost is currently a McCormick professor, so they both have very engineering-heavy backgrounds. And that was something that really stood out to me when I first learned about the announcement of Chiang as president-elect.

That being said, when I did ask him about these things, he talked a lot about how it’s important to also maintain work in the humanities and how it’s not enough to focus on just “A and I,” but in his words, “you have to focus on the C’s,” such as creativity and collaboration. So he did talk about these things in his answers, but I do think that his engineering background — him coming from a university like Purdue, his previous work in AI technology innovation — doubled with the fact that the incoming provost comes from a pretty STEM-heavy background, is pretty indicative of what the University might want to invest in in the future. And that makes sense, given the necessity of research funding in today’s higher education landscape, for sure, but it does leave some questions remaining about what that means for the humanities.

EMERSON LEGER: What did he say are his goals for his first year as president?

DESIREE LUO: That was actually the last question I asked him, and he just said his main goal is learning. Like he wrote in his initial email to the community, he wants to learn about all the NU traditions. Several times during our interview, he described himself as a freshman, and visiting Allison was part of his orientation, and I thought that was a pretty unique way to put things.

EMERSON LEGER: How do you think he differs from past presidents?

DESIREE LUO: I get the sense that President-elect Chiang was selected very much with the current higher education landscape in mind, given all the changes that universities are going through, from research and technology, federal research funding, just a lot of factors you can think about and tie back into an aspect of his background.

For me personally, the thing that stood out most, as I mentioned, is his engineering background. He did say in the Q&A, I’m not a real engineer anymore, which I believe that. He’s very busy with his duties as Purdue’s president. But I will say NU’s 17th president Michael Schill came from a law background. Before Schill, former President Morton Schapiro was an economist. And then our current interim president, Henry Bienen, who came from a background of international relations and served some positions in that regard. So, I think when you kind of line up the presidents next to each other, you can see how President-elect Chiang differs from them a little bit.

But then again, he said he’s very interested in investing in the arts, humanities, and he said that he definitely wants to embrace the interdisciplinary nature of NU. Having spoken to prior presidents, as well as, especially, interim President Bienen, I think that embracing that interdisciplinary nature is something that all presidents say they value.

EMERSON LEGER: Thank you, Desiree, for joining me on The Weekly.

DESIREE LUO: Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s good to be back.

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EMERSON LEGER: Next, I’m here with Copy Editor Carmen Gaskin to discuss NU’s Dillo Day, the largest student-run music festival in the country. Carmen, to start, can you talk about this year’s Dillo Day theme?

CARMEN GASKIN: This year’s Dillo Day theme was Dillo Speedway, and I think a lot of people interpreted that in different ways. It was a really open and creative theme that allowed people to express themselves however they felt fit for the day, and so a lot of people dressed in NASCAR-inspired attire; they had their stripes, they had their flags, they had their red. A lot of people dressed in sporty dresses that they couldn’t find anything race car themed, and I saw a lot of huge bomber jackets and shorts to kind of really embody F(ormula) 1 and getting out on the racetrack.

EMERSON LEGER: What made this year’s Dillo Day so special?

CARMEN GASKIN: I think it was very inviting and was really unprecedented, because we had a lot of artists that have either never been to Dillo or have never been to colleges at all. And so we had at The Burrow stage, which is the newest Mayfest stage, designed to help showcase underrepresented artists and their platform.

We had Lana Lubany, who was the first Palestinian woman and the first Arab woman to ever sing in Arabic on any Dillo stage in history. And so I think having that representation for Arab student populations at NU really, really fostered a sense of intimacy and closeness at her performance. We also had, at the FMO Stage, we had a lot of different rappers that showcased their sound. And we had DJ Fàájì, we had Nali, we had BabyChiefDoit, we had Cochise. And I think it was really just a time. People were jumping, people were dancing, people were really lively. And I think at the end of the day, Dillo Day is all about student spirit and fostering a student musical voice for our university, and with the FMO Stage, they definitely did it. There were dance circles, there were mosh pits, there were water guns, and throwing water around, and it was just an extremely energetic event. And you felt that when you were there.

EMERSON LEGER: Take us into Malcolm Todd’s performance, and what that was like.

CARMEN GASKIN: It was a really, really long day, and so I think at the end of the night, people are ready to cozy in, calm down. Having Malcolm Todd as the nighttime headliner really did that. I think he really fostered a sense of intimacy and closeness with his performance. He performed “Earrings,” he talked about how he had never graduated college, and how he sang “Make Me a Better Man” as his graduation song, and so I think students felt a sense of relatability and a sense of closeness to his set, given that he was in our age range, and he was really just putting on a performance for any and every college student, and it was amazing.

People were swaying, people were crying, I saw people sitting on people’s shoulders and having their flashlights on and leaning back and forth, and I think it really just winded down the day perfectly.

EMERSON LEGER: Thank you, Carmen, for joining me on The Weekly.

CARMEN GASKIN: Thank you for having me.

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EMERSON LEGER: Lastly, I’m here with Assistant City Editor Max Turetzky to talk about his coverage of Evanston Township High School’s Commencement for the Class of 2026. Max, can you describe what you saw at the commencement?

MAX TURETZKY: So, I was super excited to be able to cover it. It was in NU’s Welsh-Ryan Arena, which was interesting. There was all sorts of NU signage and posters around it, but it was also the site of the ETHS commencement, which was a bit of a funny thing to see both of them there at the same time. But yeah, I mean, there was something like at least 800 people graduating.

There was a speech by the actress Lauren Lapkus, who’s an ETHS alum herself, about her time at ETHS and advice for the graduating Class of 2026. Her speech was, I think, pretty well received. She was very involved at ETHS; she worked in newspapers, she worked in comedy improv there, and she talked about that. There was also a student commencement address, which was also very good to see. So, I think it was just overall (a) very interesting commencement to be able to cover, and I’m glad that The Daily was able to be there.

EMERSON LEGER: What are some of the messages that Laura Lapkus left to students?

MAX TURETZKY: Lapkus said, “The things that make you weird now are the things that will make you a cool, interesting person as you get older, and if you’re already cool in high school, then I’m legit scared of you.” And that was a big laugh line. A lot of people liked that. She was somebody who was very involved in improv. YAMO is the comedy improv group at ETHS, (it) still exists today, but she was very involved in it, and she talked a lot about how that kind of shaped her perspective as a student at ETHS.

She spoke a bit about how improv shaped her perspective. She said, “Improv teaches us that we already have the answers, and what I mean by that is that your gut knows the right thing to do. Trust that little voice inside of you that knows what’s right and what’s wrong.” And I thought that was also a really interesting perspective. I hadn’t heard somebody talk about how their experience with doing improv had shaped their kind of perspective on life before, so I thought that was a pretty unique perspective that she brought to the commencement.

EMERSON LEGER: What stood out most to you during the commencement?

MAX TURETZKY: The student commencement address really stood out to me. It was delivered by graduated senior Jackson Stroth. He was the student who interviewed (U.S.) Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-South Carolina) when he came to Evanston a couple months ago, and he delivered a very good speech about the history of ETHS and the people who made his time there and shaped how he is as a person at ETHS. He talked a lot about the history of ETHS, which is something I personally hadn’t known anything about before. It started off as a one-room high school in another building. There were only two students in the first graduating class, and now there are thousands of students, all sorts of different programs, even more teachers, and it’s just really incredible how, over the past 150 or so years, the school has evolved from being literally one room to having a graduation with 800 people in a sports stadium, essentially.

EMERSON LEGER: Well, thank you, Max, for joining me on The Weekly.

MAX TURETZKY: Thank you for having me.

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EMERSON LEGER: Here are the other top headlines from the week:

‘It’s a travesty’: Guzman y Gomez closes U.S. locations.

Evanston residents react to Mung Chiang as Northwestern’s new president.

Charlie Puth’s ‘Whatever’s Clever!’ tour stuns Chicago.

Rapid Recap: Northwestern 14, North Carolina 11.

Residents dive into a soup-erb dinner, drawing in donations for Evanston ASPA.

From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Emerson Leger.

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by and produced by me, Emerson Leger.

The audio editor is Wallis Rogin. The multimedia managing editors are Ruby Dowling, Isabella Jacob and Matt Wasilewski. The editor in chief is Anavi Prakash.

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