The following is a Letter to the Editor submitted to North by Northwestern and does not reflect the views of its editorial board.
We, Christina and Macs, are two students who will not stand for the current trajectory of ASG and our campus at large. Every student on this campus should realize the inequalities that pervade life at Northwestern. We are asking for your vote to help fix these inequalities, for the sake of our community and our fellow students.
This campus was not built for everyone. ASG was not built for everyone. Our university has consistently silenced the voices of a large section of the student body. While it is attractive and easy to shoot for “doable” goals, to do so would be a disservice and an offense to students who are consistently ignored on this campus.
While we think that Joji and Archie strive to solve legitimate issues, we fear that their platform ignores the various elephants in the room. How can we focus on “streamlining information” when our university invests in the prison-industrial complex? How can “reducing miscommunication” be the most important task at hand when students on this campus can’t breathe? We all want to “optimize SOFO” and wait in line less, but isn’t this a low bar for what we can achieve as a community of students?
Don’t settle for an administration that creates a toxic campus. We need more professors who can empathize with the experience of marginalized students. We need to fight the investment practices that make us all complicit in human rights violations. We need to expand administrative definitions of “low socioeconomic status” that leave students in need of services in the cold.
Don’t settle for a university that emphasizes having a “diverse” student body, but refuses to support those students. We need to create resources to make textbooks more affordable. Access to gender-open housing and bathrooms should be a right. The fact that some buildings on this campus are not physically accessible to all students is an embarrassment.
Don’t settle for a Board of Trustees that does not listen to the cries of the student body. We want to amplify the voices of students who are already working to right these wrongs. We support NU Divest, Unshackle NU and Fossil Free NU and have included members of these movements in the conversations that created this campaign.
ASG should not govern students; it should unionize them. If anything has become clear in our time on campus, it is that these wrongs will not correct themselves. Stand with us against the apathetic discourse that only pays lip service to the inequalities that ail this campus.
Give us your vote on April 8th and help us fundamentally change the conversation. And, above all else: Don’t Settle.