PRIORITIZING THE SHUTTLE SYSTEM

The Issue

Whether it's catching the Ryan Field shuttle to class, riding the intercampus down to Chicago, or taking the purple route at night from the Arch, the Northwestern Shuttle system is a service that we know all too well. While they are a great resource for all students, the system as it stands is inefficient and needs to be addressed. Particularly concerns about the punctuality of shuttles and their current routes have come to the forefront.

Plan of Action

Goal: For all University shuttles to be punctual and run on more efficient routes.

Mike and Tommy are by no means advocating complete overhaul of the system; rather, they want to tweak a framework currently in place.

Reliability

Mike and Tommy will ensure the University upholds its commitment to give students access to real time shuttle locations via GPS by September 2009. The University's contract with CoachUSA stipulates that we should have access to the GPS systems already in the busses. With access to this system, we can create a system that is in use at Princeton for Northwestern. Such a system will help determine precise locations and arrival times of all shuttles. As a result, students will be able to receive real time shuttle information. This system would give estimated times of arrival that students could rely on when considering waiting for a shuttle. That means, no more waiting 20 minutes for the frostbite express shuttle in January with the -30 degree weather. Mike and Tommy see the far-reaching impact of implementing a GPS tracking system. Possible uses of the already available GPS tracking service include:

• Easily viewable real time arrival schedules online.
• Viewing shuttle movements on all routes online.
• Possibly integrate this technology to be viewable on mobile devices so that shuttle locations could be determined on the go.
• Utilizing a system like TransLOC already in place at peer institutions like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Click here for an example: http://princeton.transloc.com/
• Also making real time arrival schedules available via text messaging to mobile devices such as MIT.

Reassessing the Routes

While the timeliness of the shuttles is one issue, the current routes are also a concern. As of now, the University is planning to route shuttles as they were in the 2006-2007 academic year. This will occur in the Fall of 2009 after the conclusion of construction on Campus Drive. After the changes are made, we will work with the University to assess the quality of these routes and give recommendations to be implemented during the Winter Quarter 2010.

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IMPROVING ALCOHOL SAFETY

The Issue

Student alcohol consumption is not unique to Northwestern University. It is a defining part of college culture in America. At Northwestern, 1300 students a year have judicial violations of which nearly half are alcohol related. Of the alcohol related violations, some are a result of transports to the Evanston hospital due to excess alcohol consumption. The data in the adjacent table shows that alcohol related transports to the hospital doubled between 2006-2007 and 2007-2008. Furthermore, Fall quarter 2008 alone had more incidents than the entire 2007-2008 academic year. While the dramatic rise in alcohol transport incidents could simply be attributed to increased risky alcohol behavior that is not the whole picture. There are at least two other factors that also affect alcohol transports. One such factor is the implementation of programs by the university such as placing Community Service Officers in dorms who are more likely to call emergency services in cases of excessive alcohol consumption. A second factor is more effective alcohol education during the Wildcat Welcome orientation sessions. Both of these initiatives have increased the likelihood that students in trouble receive help and responsible caretakers do not hesitate to call for help.

Despite factors that explain the rise in alcohol transports, these statistics are still alarming and must be addressed. In sum, there are two issues that must be addressed. First, the judicial incentive structure currently in place discourages students to call for help when needed. Second, students currently have multiple incentives that force them to drink quicker and heavier which puts them more at risk for injury.

Plan of Action

Short-term goal: to give students more incentives to seek safety and help when in dangerous situations.

Long-term goal: to minimize the number of students who drink excessively and encourage more responsible moderate drinking.

Tommy Smithburg currently chairs the Alcohol Safety Task Force, composed of 2 administrators and 10 students. This task force seeks to improve the safety of alcohol use on campus. The task force will do this through four strategies: Improve university policies and programs, education, late night programming, and transportation initiatives. Currently, the administration is considering an amnesty policy and how it could be implemented at Northwestern. Tommy and the task force have voiced their perspective to Jim Neumeister, Director of Judicial Affairs, who is working with administrators on this possible amnesty proposal. This task force is acting on the recommendations made in the "Student Community Relations Task Force Report" of December 2006. The task force is currently in the process of developing action plans for specific initiatives in each strategy. We expect results to be forthcoming in stages throughout the following 12 months.

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OFF-CAMPUS
STUDENT RESOURCE CENTER

The Issue

Off-campus students comprise nearly 40% of Northwestern's student body. Moving off-campus as an upperclassman is a well-known rite of passage and students search for off campus housing every year. Unfortunately, the burden is on the students to find contact information for property managers and understand the reputation of the housing they are moving in to. Moreover, students must also work on their own to understand the tenant and landlord rights that they must live by. The university provides few resources to help students in this regard (University Off Campus Resources). The current system creates difficulties for students trying to find housing and puts stress on the relationship between students, landlords, and neighbors. Lastly, having to search for property manager information is a loss of students' time.

ASG has begun pursuing this issue with programs like the Off Campus Housing Evaluation (OCHE) and off-campus housing guide. In a meeting with the Dean of Student Affairs, Mary Desler, Tommy was able to confirm the school is unlikely to provide the resources to solve this student issue. In the current economic crisis, it should be expected that the university will be unable to provide for some student needs. Whenever possible, ASG must rush to ensure the needs and problems of students that were once met by the university are now met by ASG.

Plan of Action

Goal 1: Provide students with the information to easily find off campus housing and make informed decisions as to which housing best suits their needs.

Goal 2: Help students understand Evanston tenant and landlord rights in order to prevent Evanston landlords from taking advantage of them.

Currently, the resources that help students with their off campus needs are disorganized and inadequate. ASG must work to organize and greatly improve the services offered to students.

Initiatives:

• Work with the new External Relations Director to create an Off Campus Housing Officer position to ensure our goals are met.
• Gather contact information for all property management companies in Evanston. This simple measure will save students hours as they search for off campus housing.
• Enable students to learn more about the prospective off campus housing opportunities. This year, the External Relations committee successfully developed the Off Campus Housing Evaluation Service (ASG OCHE). ASG OCHE surveys students currently off campus about their living experience. This service gives prospective off campus students more information to help them make a more informed decision about where to live. However, similar to many other current services, this service can use many improvements. It can be improved with more user-friendly attributes and data validation techniques to clarify given information.
• Summarize tenant and landlord rights for all off campus students to understand their rights. The Off Campus Housing Officer should thoroughly read and summarize the rights document. Moreover, they should be available to answer student questions and work with students to resolve issues when necessary.

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WIRELESS

The Issue

In Spring 2008, ASG- along with the Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee-successfully lobbied the administration for wireless internet in all on-campus housing. The 2008-2009 academic year marked the first time that all dorms at Northwestern had wireless internet access. The University has indeed done a commendable job in getting this initiative implemented.

The wireless network on campus still has room for improvement, however. There are concerns in dorms on both North and South campus regarding connectivity issues and signal strength. Furthermore, wireless connectivity problems have been apparent in academic buildings like Tech, Annenberg and Parkes Hall.

Plan of Action

Mike and Tommy are committed to working with NUIT and its director during the quarterly ASG-NUIT meetings to address this issue. They know it is important to work with wireless officials to survey problem areas to understand the scope of connectivity issues. This survey would help NUIT identify all areas on campus that have weak or saturated wireless connectivity. This collected data could then be used to improve signal strength in dorms and academic buildings.

Mike and Tommy also want to mobilize ASG resources to address this problem. They envision the ASG Academic Director and the University Classroom Committee working together to target academic buildings. Collaboration between the ASG Academic Committee and NUIT would result in educational efforts to help students self-diagnose their computers' connectivity troubles. Finally, working with the Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee, ASG could also petition for added wireless routers in "problem" areas on campus.

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NEW STUDENT CENTER

The Issue

Norris University Center is not successfully serving the role of a centrally located student center that unites the student body. Its limited amenities and poor aesthetics don't provide a fair and appealing representation of Northwestern. Furthermore, as identified by the administration's Campus Framework Committee, Norris is also "locationally challenged" in that it is inconveniently far away from North and South campus residents. This reduces its effectiveness in bringing students together and further emphasizes the need for a new student center.

ASG played a big role in successfully advocating the inclusion of a new student center in the University's 50-year strategic plan. The construction of this new student center would take place by Garrett Theological Seminary, a centrally placed location that can easily be accessed by all on-campus students. The inclusion of the new student center in Northwestern's 50 year strategic plan, however, is only the start of the process. ASG needs to continue to prioritize this issue and follow up with administrators to implement the new student center.

Plan of Action

Mike and Tommy recognize the impact incoming Northwestern University President Morton Shapiro could have on this project. President Shapiro understands the importance of having a successful student center and how it can enhance student life. At Williams College, his former institution, he conducted a very successful fundraising project for the college and oversaw the construction of the Paresky Student Center, which opened just two years ago in February 2007. Mike and Tommy will work with President Shapiro to make the new student center a major priority in the upcoming years.

Mike and Tommy also want to get ASG involved with this project. With the help of the ASG Student Life Director, Mike and Tommy want to continue to work with the Campus Framework Committee in its upcoming plans. By engaging the ASG Student Life committee, they want to gather valuable input from students regarding this project that can be presented to the Framework committee. Mike and Tommy would also like to connect with the Northwestern Alumni Association to get alumni interested to promote this initiative with the administration.

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ADVOCATING
ACADEMIC TECHNOLOGIES

The Issue

Advances in academic technologies are not only providing a better learning experience for college students, but also decreasing educational costs. Both the University and ASG have taken steps in the right direction to promote the growth of these technologies. The administration recently launched its iTunes U service, which provides easily downloadable multimedia content of academic lectures, presentations, and campus events among other items. The ASG Academic Committee also proposed and passed legislation during Winter quarter advocating greater use of online course packets and e-books by professors to reduce costs.

While this is a good start, Mike and Tommy believe that there is still a lot to be achieved if we want to truly enrich the academic experience on campus and remain competitive with peer institutions that already provide a lot of these resources for their students.

Plan of Action

Mike and Tommy want to encourage the implementation of new academic services for students. Specifically, they want to follow up on the ASG legislation passed by the Academic Committee to work with the Northwestern Library to use technology that enables professors to upload course packets online. They also want to work with deans of the different schools and Norris bookstore to expand the store's already existent digital e-book collection.

Mike and Tommy want to collaborate with NUIT to increase the use of audio and video capture technology in courses. iTunes U provides a great avenue for professors to upload pure audio lectures or even full videos that can easily be downloaded onto an iPod or computer. Such technology could also be integrated into the current Blackboard structure. All in all, being able to review lectures on a laptop or iPod expands the learning experience and provides students with academic content on the go.

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Increasing Diversity

Preface

While the Northwestern brand stretches from Evanston to Qatar, some students still don’t know about Northwestern, or feel that Northwestern is out of reach. Thus, Northwestern must reach out to all of these prospective students, particularly underrepresented minorities, and provide equal opportunity for all Northwestern students. Increasing diversity is essential for the continuing development of the Northwestern community.

The Issue

Students have a major role to play in how prospective underrepresented students view Northwestern. We have the ability to not only improve our current situation at NU, but to improve the experiences of future Wildcats.

Plan of Action

• Work Admissions & Financial Aid, FMO, and MSA to get more student hosts for Preview NU
• Encourage all students to do phone-a-thons and write letters to prospective students, highlighting their NU experience
• Work with the numerous existing student-led initiatives on campus to share resources and consolidate our efforts, and ultimately achieve our goals
• Create partnerships with education initiatives in Chicago (e.g. U.S. Empowered) to bring NU students to mentor CPS kids
  • Provide important college information and tips
  • Provide application support (reading essays, ACT/SAT prep, class counseling)

The Issue

Our focus should not merely be on on aggressively “recruiting” underrepresented students--we must also provide adequate services here at NU to keep retention at a high rate.

The Action Plan

• Work with each undergraduate school to setup student-run groups that provide networking and other advising opportunities to incoming underrepresented students.
• Work with Admissions & Financial Aid to provide more information, such as a resource guide, to equip to low-income students so that they know how to acquire everything they need to be successful at Northwestern
• Establish a sustainable relationship with US Empowered, a nonprofit college preparatory program for low-income CPS students
• This past year, ASG sponsored an extremely successful US Empowered Event this year, where we brought 72 CPS students to NU for overnight visit. We want to make the event bigger and better for years to come.
  • Work with the Board of Trustees to add more events to the program (e.g. Night with Chicago Bulls, special autographed gears, day with a Trustee)
  • Work with performance student groups to increase the time of our Student Showcase to the CPS students.
• Continue to work with NU Housing & Residential Life to get gender-neutral housing at NU
• Work with interested students, student groups (e.g. FMO) and administrators (Caretta Cooke and Dr. William Banis) to evaluate where this selection process of the Director of African-American Student Affairs stands. The most important thing is to give students a say in the selection process of their director.

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SUSTAINABILITY

The Issue

While Northwestern has implemented green initiatives on campus, there is still much to be done before Northwestern becomes truly green. We must continue to focus on finding sustainable solutions to provide the best future for Northwestern.

Plan of Action

• Lobby the administration to implement a Revolving Sustainability Loan Fund to bolster green initiatives on campus
• Continue to pursue the implementation of digital textbooks and electronic course packets on campus
• Actively work with the administration to reduce paper filing, printing, and other energy-intensive daily operations. Such an initiative saved Washington State University, where it sought to cut $10 million per year from the university's budget. (Read more)

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ASG REFORMS

The Issue

ASG in the past year has seen a lot of internal reform, yet there is still room for improvement. ASG increased the quality of the executive board by adding the Vice-President and Operations Director positions. ASG increased the accountability and responsibility of senators by forming the caucus system. Lastly, ASG made institutional changes to improve the transition between administrations and preserve institutional memory to allow ASG to grow over time. However, more complicated and additional reforms are needed. We still do not collaborate enough with other large governing bodies on campus. This opportunity would allow ASG to be better able to tackle large issues on campus. Moreover, many student groups are not satisfied with the student group funding structure. This issue has become more vocal within the past year.

Plan of Action

Mike and Tommy understand that issues on their platform have a broad reach on campus. As a result, in order to provide the best solutions to these problems ASG will have to collaborate with other large governing bodies. For example, they recognize that an issue like wireless in the dorms can only be solved when ASG can work together with the Residential Hall Association and Residential College Board to gather the necessary information about day to day connectivity problems.

Mike and Tommy realize that the improvements in alcohol safety that they are seeking is an issue that affects both Greek and non-Greek students. As a result, solutions must involve Greek councils and RHA and RCB in order to adequately understand the problem and therefore provide the best solution. The relevant governing bodies will have a lot to say about how ASG attempts to improve alcohol safety on campus. Only through partnership can ASG best communicate everyone's concerns properly.

Mike and Tommy want to encourage the steps taken this past year by the ASG Student Group and Financial Directors to explore an improved and unified funding system for all groups and want to bring this information to the student group leaders for their input. Student group funding affects a large number of programming on campus. Any modifications, therefore, must involve both the relevant ASG directors and student group leaders to avoid a chaotic allocation process as improvements are made. Mike and Tommy know that a flexible timeline is of essence and major policy changes will go into effect Spring 2010 or later.

Mike and Tommy also recognize that a big part of funding woes can attributed to poor budget creation training by ASG for newly elected treasurers. SOFO training is a rules-based, policy information lecture. It does not adequately teach groups how to create proper sustainable budgets and maintain them. Mike and Tommy want to work with the Student Group Director, Student Group Committee, and advisors in the Center for Student Involvement to increase budget handling knowledge.

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