Candidates for Associated Student Government this year have worked hard on their campaigns. Today is finally election day, so if you’ve tuned the campaigns out, here is a brief review of the three contested elections.

President

The ASG presidential race has become quite the heated competition, with more candidates campaigning than the campus has seen in several years. Strong competition means each contender has spent significant time out among the student community to make himself known. From debating their opponents to flyering and chalking the campus, and personal visits to dorms and student-group meetings, those running for the coveted top spot have invested serious time into their campaigns.

“It takes up pretty much all my time,” said Mark Crain, a Weinberg junior and one of the five candidates. “I study very, very late at night and not as much as I would like to. I’m doing a whole lot of running around and talking to people. It is the number one priority right now.”

Still, all of this work in the campaign phase does little to reduce uncertainty. The race has essentially come down to a contest of who can better reconnect the student body to ASG, which candidates have said is disconnected and ineffective in addressing student concerns. This morning an informal survey on North by Northwestern, which compares each of the five candidates with the option of not voting, reports that 37 percent of respondents say they do not care about the elections. Twenty-six percent of respondents say they plan to vote for SESP junior Neal Sales-Griffin, while 21 percent say they will vote for Crain.

Creative ideas abound among the platforms, but no candidate has more than a year of student-government experience he could use to separate himself from the other four candidates.

Candidates’ platforms are geared toward making ASG more transparent. Ideas include that of Sales-Griffin’s to make the ASG Web site more informative and navigable, or Crain’s idea to issue a “Weekly Letter from the President,” to alert the campus to the happenings in meetings.

Other ideas include initiatives to improve campus life, such as Weinberg junior Blake Yocom’s push to create an off-campus housing office, enhance shuttle services and make Career Services more accessible via the Internet. Weinberg junior Scott Burton emphasizes security, better lighting and an improved SafeRide service, while Weinberg sophomore Luke Adams aims to bring U-Passes for undergraduates and campus-wide wireless Internet.

Academic Vice President

Both candidates for academic vice president have extensive experience with ASG, and must rely on other factors to distinguish himself.

Mike McGee is a Communication sophomore without a guess about whether he or his opponent, Weinberg junior Usman Mian, will win. While McGee has two years of experience with ASG, he has primarily worked with the executive committee, although he has some experience with the academic committee that he seeks to head.

Mian has worked exclusively with the academic committee during his time in ASG, and he has worked particularly closely with the last two AVPs: current graduate student Jordan Fox and McCormick senior Anna Xu. This experience has been especially emphasized in Mian’s campaign.

The campaign has proved particularly intense for these two, since the biggest obstacle for both candidates has been setting themselves apart from each other. But an intense campaign may be good for students: Campaigning has allowed the candidates to immerse themselves more deeply into the student community and get a better grasp on the issues the winner will need to address in ASG.

“I feel like this past week I have seen a whole different Northwestern,” McGee said.

Student Services Vice President

The student services vice president is responsible for improving quality of life on campus. To gauge the needs of students and student groups, McCormick sophomore Nate Perkins and his opponent, Weinberg junior Hariharan “Harry” Vijayaraghavan, have spent their time meeting with as many groups and students as possible.

“This week has been crazy all the way through,” Perkins said. “I haven’t really had much down time, and I feel it gets progressively worse over time, but I feel like you get used to it.”

The biggest issues focused on in the campaign this year is safety, such as Vijayaraghavan’s initiative to increase the frequency of blue emergency lights around campus, and get more general lighting, and Perkins’ ideas of increasing campus patrols, and having a “light walk” to identify dangerous places on campus.