Medill junior Bill Pulte, President of Pi Kappa Alpha, has been named Vice President. Weinberg junior Tom Smithburg, former President of Delta Upsilon, will become Human Resources Director.

ASG President Neal Sales-Griffin said that when he interviewed both Pulte and Smithburg their passion and knowledge of ASG were evident. “They did their homework. They read through quarterly reports, looked through candidates’ platforms and knew about the structural changes,” Sales-Griffin said.

The Vice President will take on some duties previously held by the President and Executive Vice President and serve as a liaison to administrators. Pulte will be working on executive-level initiatives set forth by the Academic, Student Services, Community Relations and External Relations Committees.

In his freshman year, Pulte founded the online business NUlist.org, which provided Northwestern students with a forum to buy and sell goods, and make announcements. He sold NUlist.org to help pay for his pilot’s license, which would be integral to his next business venture.

Pulte now runs Great Lake Helicopters, LLC, an aerial photography firm for the North Shore. Pulte told North By Northwestern last year that flying has been a dream of his since he was a kid. If he continues the business after graduation, Pulte said at the time, he would try to make it the “McDonald’s of aerial photography.”

Pulte also served as Blake Yocom’s campaign manager in the fall when he ran against President Neal Sales-Griffin. Sales-Griffin says he was friendly and cordial during that race and, while he and Sales-Griffin are both entrepreneurs, Pulte’s experience as a businessman was not a huge factor in the decision.

As Human Resources Director, Smithburg will help to manage student involvement and improve organizational efficiency. Smithburg was president of Delta Upsilon when the fraternity gained notoriety for bringing the Half Pint Brawlers, a midget wrestling group, to a pledge event.

During the selection process, Sales-Griffin said he viewed the midget scandal as a good thing for Smithburg as a candidate. “When Tommy explained to us what he learned from [the scandal] it said a lot to us,” Griffin said. “It’s important for people to learn from tough times and you can learn a lot from failure.”

The two positions were created under an amendment to ASG’s code in the spring. The change was subject to much debate.

During original deliberations of the constitution, then-senior Cassie Witten said changes to ASG “can happen within the framework we already have.”

“I didn’t hear in there any reason to add the positions that were added in the code,” said Witten at the time, who had been a senator for the last two years and a half. “Every year as soon as a president gets in, they look at the constitution and try to revise it.”

Executive Vice President Vikram Karandikar described the amendments at the time as “a call for help” with the overwhelming functions of the president and the executive vice president, while Sales-Griffin said that the “opportunities” they create are “way greater than the costs.”

Pulte and Smithburg will be presenting themselves and their positions at ASG Senate on Wednesday night.

A blue spandex unitard hides in Weinberg senior Lucy Dietch’s closet, and has made occasional appearances throughout her college life. No, she’s not a superhero — but she does wear the silly outfit with an altruistic purpose. Dietch will proudly don the unitard every minute of the first week of December to raise $500 for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. She’s putting on the charity stunt because of BeExtraordinary.org, a website run by her friends Jackson Froliklong and Matt Cynamon, senior social policy majors in SESP.

BeExtraordinary.org encourages its users to do almost anything — as long as it’s not illegal, pornographic or dangerous — they want to raise money for charity. Users conceptualize a challenge and then complete it for donations, with the website facilitating fundraising through social networking. On Monday Oct. 20, after eighteen months of development, Cynamon and Froliklong officially launched their site, which all started with Cynamon’s announcement of his own challenge.

In the fall of 2006, Cynamon and Froliklong began formulating the idea of fun, engaging philanthropy in their frat house Chi Psi, familiarly known as Lodge, as they considered how college life lacked connection to the real world.

“I’m wasting my time, I’m just going through the motions of college,” then-sophomore Matt Cynamon complained to his Lodge brothers as he threw aside his economics textbook. “Forget this. I’m dropping out of school and walking across the Great Wall of China.”

“He wouldn’t stop talking about it,” says Jackson Froliklong, a Lodge brother and business partner. “So we said, ‘Hey, if you can’t beat him, join him.’”

After what could have been easily dismissed as a joke, the conversations about Cynamon’s Great Wall journey began to take a serious turn. Froliklong and other friends brainstormed ideas about how to realize his goal. Quickly, the idea of attracting sponsors and then donating the money emerged, along with some key strategies that shaped the beginning of the challenge-for-charity system. In the fall and winter of 2006, the group members convened and decided that they could quickly start fundraising through a Web site.

Cynamon’s original ambitious goal of conquering the Great Wall of China for charity became a template and a serious business plan for BeExtraordinary.org. The group, consisting of Cynamon, Froliklong, Weinberg student Micah Friedland (now a senior) and Communication student Devin Balkind (who graduated last year), decided to apply for a few grants. But Froliklong called participation in the NU Venture Challenge, inNUvations’s entrepreneurship challenge, the tipping point.

InNUvation, an entrepreneurship group on campus, describes their Venture Challenge as a “platform for entrepreneurial students to experience first-hand the process of cultivating a business idea from scratch.” During the first annual NU Venture Challenge, the undergraduate team from Lodge proposed their concept for BeExtradordinary.org to a panel of judges. The website team beat 30 semi-finalist teams, many of which consisted of graduate students (the second-placed team even had a Feinberg faculty member), to win 3rd prize overall, best social entrepreneurship idea and best undergraduate pitch. The competition netted them a total of $7,000 in start-up capital.

“After the competition, we got to work doing everything we thought we needed to do to get a business off the ground, with relatively little knowledge about what it took.” Cynamon said.

Froliklong describes three distinct phases of development since the initial influx of money. The group knew immediately that as non-tech people trying to start a tech company, they needed web designers. After enlisting Northwestern friends to lay the infrastructure for the Web site, the group linked with a University of Chicago professor who facilitated a relationship with web developers in India.

“Talk about a concrete learning experience,” Froliklong says. “I now have experience managing web development in another country, which is absurd.”

After a few months, the relationship with the Indian developers dissolved because too many details were getting lost in translation, so Cynamon and Froliklong began working with Chicago web-development company Midventures, and they eventually finished the site with Michael McNally, an independent contractor from Texas.

“There was no straight-line trajectory,” Cynamon said. “Everything was two steps forward, one step back.”

Before the beginning of their senior year, Froliklong and Cynamon decided that they needed an office. “We are college students but we are doing something very serious, especially when it comes to handling money,” Froliklong said.

They now rent one of the offices at a business incubator at 820 Davis Street. The room is small, with one table for laptops and a landline. The large whiteboard that occupies most of the right wall is so cluttered with black marker splotches that it slightly resembles a Jackson Pollack painting. In the upper right corner, one phrase is outlined: “minimize the office frat.” It helps the group reduce conversations of collegiate activities — beer pong and kegs — and maintain a professional atmosphere.

Walking down the fourth-floor hallway, one might hear the faint electro funk beats of Chromeo’s ”Bonafide Lovin”; one might also hear a curse word, quickly followed by chastising.

The idea for BeExtraordinary.org may have been born out of Chi Psi, but Froliklong and Cynamon emphasize how far from that starting point they have come. Their office shares a building with the Evanston Family Therapy Center and Chicago’s Green City Market. Although Cynamon and Froliklong still take classes and focus on graduating in the spring, they constantly remind themselves that this is a professional business.

By Friday of the site’s first official week, six challenges had been published. Posted challenges now include running the 2009 Chicago marathon and wearing a full mustache for the week (The marathon challenge is aiming for little bit more money than the facial hair feat). Dietch’s blue spandex unitard challenge has almost reached her fundraising goal of $500.

“Matt approached me about doing the first challenge for the site and I’ve always had this blue spandex suit,” Dietch said “I thought it would be a funny, eye-catching thing to do.”

Dietch said that she has relied exclusively on e-mail chains such as school listservs to raise the money and was surprised by the quick response. She thinks that the site’s main strength stems from tapping into this generation’s obsession with online communities.

“It does a great job of incorporating fun elements of Facebook: making a profile, adding a picture, comments,” she said.“There are a lot of elements to make it fun and keep you involved.”

Cynamon and Froliklong recruited friends to undertake challenges, and the founders personally know most of the challengers on the site now. One recently completed challenge though, which raised more $200, was completed by two Northwestern students whom Frolkilong and Cynamon didn’t know.

“Right now what we’re doing is trying to get people on the site and build community at Northwestern before expanding it nationally,” Cynamon said. BeExtraordinary.org is still a work in progress. Cynamon and Froliklong want to use Northwestern as a model to work out all of the kinks and that’s easier to do here, where the site has been positively received.

Although the ultimate goal is to get local businesses and corporations to sponsor different challenges on the site, its success isn’t a numbers game right now, its founders say. According to Froliklong and Cynamon, if people use the site, raise money for charity and have a good time, the founders will feel like they’ve accomplished what they set out to do.

“In a year’s time I’d love to say that we have funding from investors and that we’re at another university,” Froliklong said.

Their vision extends beyond just a year. With the possibility of investors still only on the horizon, a lot of the money they are now working with is their own: Both Froliklong and Cynamon say they have invested their life savings in this project.

“Honey, are you sure that was the right decision?” Froliklong’s mother asked. “No, I’m not, but I did it,” he replied.

Cynamon’s parents were thrilled about the project and supported him in using his own money. “My goal was to make this a viable career option. And what better time than in college to take on a risky venture,” Cynamon said. “I have no children, no mortgage, so why not try to launch our own company?”

In addition to “minimizing office frat,” the BeExtraordinary team has another, more serious mantra: “Philanthropy is greater than advertising.”

“We’d like to change the paradigm of marketing and how businesses communicate with our generation,” Froliklong said.

There’s evidence that Foliklong’s ambition might be attainable because of recent trends toward investors supporting altruistically minded companies. A study of investors’ behavior by the Social Investment Forum in Washington showed that socially conscious investment assets grew by 18 percent from 2005 to 2007. The inaugural Conscious Consumer Report from marketing and branding firm BBMG claims that “nearly nine in ten Americans use the phrase say the words ‘conscious consumers’ describes them well” and many consumers are more likely to “buy from companies that manufacture energy efficient products, promote health and safety benefits, support fair labor and trade practices and commit to environmentally friendly practices.”

“Instead of pouring money into silly TV commercials, corporations can put that money into positive initiatives, charities and challenges, and frame themselves on our site by how they interact with challenges,” Cynamon said. “We want our site to be on the forefront in pioneering the trend. All it takes is for this community to be successful to move onto stage two and start what we see as the philanthropy-is-greater-than-advertising movement.”

Before Cynamon or Froliklong can think about expanding, they still have to graduate. Both say that the site is their number-one priority after finishing school. Froliklong is going to apply for Teach for America, depending on BeExtraordinary’s financial viability next year. Cynamon says this whole process has imparted a passion for social entrepreneurship, and he sees the Web site as an introduction to the field.

Two years ago, Cynamon’s original declaration may have seemed like the grumbling of a discontented college student, but he wasn’t joking about the Great Wall of China.

“I want to spend a good portion of next year actually walking across the Great Wall,” he said. “As soon as things calm down here a little, I can put the challenge up and start promoting myself.”

But enough with school. The sixth annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival brings two powerful films to Lincoln Park’s Cinematheque, off of the Fullerton El stop. Cocalero, a film about controversial Bolivian President Evo Morales, will be screened at 7 p.m. followed by White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at 9 p.m. Both movies were nominated for the grand jury prize at Sundance Film Fest.

Downtown may be too far for some and that’s the beauty of the Block Cinema. It shows Fear Eats the Soul at 8 p.m. English and African American Studies professor Alexander Weheliye will hold a discussion after that. Fear Eats the Soul is a “short, tough tale… that reveals melodrama in the cheap loneliness and banality of everyday life.”

For an afternoon diversion, listen to Performance Studies Professor Esailama Diouf discuss African culture. Staging the African: Transnational Flows of West African Dance and Cultural Identity will be held at 620 Library Place in the seminar room at noon.

If Rent wasn’t your thing, there’s plenty of substantive films playing on campus. In the Family, a film about a woman faced with the looming likelihood of developing breast cancer based on a predictive genetic test, will be screened at Ryan Auditorium at 7 p.m. Block Cinema will show Black Girl, a 1966 Senegalese film about life after colonization. Professor Richard Iton will hold a discussion after the 8:30 p.m. screening.

Baskin Robbins is taking a twist on Wedensday’s colloquial label of hump day, inviting soon-to-be moms to celebrate “bump day.” Even if you don’t fall under that category, you might want to pass along the news to expecting women, who can receive some free soft serve ice cream.

Is the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? Explore your brain in 60 seconds and learn which side of it you use more.

Tomorrow marks the first Green City Marketof the season. Get up early and venture to Lincoln Park between 7:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. to peruse aisles of organic meat, produce, artisanal cheeses and many more foods for the stomach and the soul.

After fulfilling your inner locavore, stay downtown for the World Fair Trade Day Festival in the Loop’s Daley Plaza. Wherever you stand on the issue, you can still learn about or buy socially- and environmentally-friendly goods from clothing to kitchen supplies. Vendors such as Ten Thousand Villages will sell fair-trade products from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

If El frustrations deter downtown diversions, exercise your mind with NCDC’s panel discussion on American Immigration Policy. Community activists and Northwestern professors will debate in Tech M345 at 7 p.m.

The Senior VP of the Field Museum will come to Northwestern to discuss the evolution of evolutionary thought. You can explore the new Pancoe Life Sciences Pavilion building on 2200 Campus Drive and investigate how history, museums, science and religion interact to shape evolutionary philosophy. The event will run from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Room 2401.

If you suddenly realized that Block Museum has a movie theater because it’s showing Planet Earth, head over there at 7 p.m. for Ten More Good Years and a talk with director Michael Jacoby. His film explores the unique difficulties facing gay and lesbian seniors, when growing old and gray becomes “growing old and gay,” as the description notes.

If gay retirement isn’t your thing, maybe the French school of clarinet playing is. Go see the principal clarinetist with the Paris Opera Orchestra, Philippe Cuper, in Lutkin Hall at 7:30 p.m. Life is all about new experiences, right?

Don’t wait for the Chicago Tribune to cultivate your own backyard. The Institute for Women’s Health Research at Northwestern is looking to link women with scientists conducting university-sponsored studies and clinical trials. The research projects will explore health trends among Illinois women.

If you don’t want to relinquish the dreams of starting a new stoic gang on your own back porch, take inspiration from the Butterfly Assassins, whose bassist Danny Yadron is a Northwestern undergraduate. They may not have to give up their “impractical” artistic lives, as the band is one of four winning local acts to play at Metromix Rock ‘n’ Vote 2008 in Wicker Park.

Check out the third night of Africa Awareness Week. A joint talk with Afrilogue will explore successful administrations in the African continent. “We Are More Than Corruption” will be held in Kresge 4-365 at 6:30 p.m.

If you just want to stay in Chicago this summer, consider CNN’s warning after the city experienced 36 shootings and nine deaths last weekend: “Now there is a growing fear that Chicago could be in for a long, bloody summer.”

Or you could receive a Congressional scholarship one day, just like five Northwestern juniors. Appropriately on Earth Day, juniors Samuel Schiller and Nikolai Smith were named Udall Scholars for their work as committed environmentalists. René Boiteau, Ryosuke Kita and Tami Lieberman clinched Goldwater Scholarships for their scientific accomplishments.

Still worried about money for this summer? You could start a business in the old Gary Poppins location that closed earlier this year. We need something to fill the void left by the once-pervasive smell of every-flavor popcorn. Just test the business ground by signing up for the Business-Law Conference at Northwestern that will explore how business and law intersect.

There may have been no female candidates for ASG positions this year, but at least the gals are getting fully represented in sports. And lacrosse isn’t the only one: The softball team, now ranked 13th in the nation, swept Notre Dame 5-0 yesterday. But the women are not completely overshadowing the men. Football returned to the practice field Tuesday though and sales for next season’s tickets already take precedence over spring games on nusports.com. And Joe Muraski was named co-Big Ten pitcher of the week along with a rival from Michigan State.

Northwestern also cares about producing graduates who will refuse that banking job and try to solve societal problems. The Brady Program in Ethics and Civic Life will admit 16 Northwestern sophomores next year to learn about ethics and moral philosophy, the university announced Tuesday. “We’re trying to make Northwestern not only the best university in the world but also the best university for the world,” said Professor Laurie Zoloth, director of the program. Maybe Northwestern students will get on Oprah for something other than standing in a lame, rectangular bubble.

After hosting a movie night earlier in the week, Sprinkle on Friday held an intimate talk and retrospective of her life’s work as a legendary porn star, a Ph.D., an artist, a breast-cancer survivor and a “metamorphosexual.” At age 53, this is her 35th year working with sexually oriented material, and she’s spent 20 years in the mainstream porn and prostitution industry. Since her first experience at age 17, her sex tally includes more than 3,000 partners.

“Does everyone here like porn?” Sprinkle said to begin her talk. “If you hate what’s out there, don’t reject it. Porn is harder than it looks — no pun intended — but you can all make it yourselves.”

Sprinkle herself created a porn-made-easy video early in her career, outlining the key components — erotic theme, plot, good lighting — necessary for any adult movie. Teen Mermaid Fanta-sea demonstrated the perfect recipe: Mermaids with assless green tails played under water as the rubbing of cunt, not conch, shells offered explicit visual metaphors.

Although she is now confident enough to show herself nude in nautical sex scenes, Sprinkle said she feared sex as a teenager. The topic was always taboo throughout her childhood; she wanted to be touched and physically loved but her family didn’t offer that.

Annie’s obsession with sex began after losing her virginity; she had 50 lovers within six months, indulging in the hippie culture of promiscuity and free love. Sprinkle worked at an adult-video store and then as a masseuse, a job which quickly developed into prostitution. Her friends decided they might as well get paid for having sex all of the time, and her career went into video. Her persona, Annie Sprinkle, developed as a “fearless, sexy, voluptuous woman that seemed to be everything [she] wasn’t.”

Streets of Sin Francisco, an interracial porn thriller, epitomized the raunchy, “pubic hairy” porn of the ’70s. Students at the talk learned the true definition of extreme close-up as the screen displayed a toothbrush penetrating multiple orifices of Sprinkle’s body.

But she said that porn did not satisfy all aspects of her personality, specifically her intellect. She had seen the physical aspects of sex, but a full understanding of the subject needed an academic view. Sprinkle attended college and went on to earn a Ph.D. in human sexuality. Never compromising her dedication to shock value, Sprinkle posed nude for her graduation picture, with the traditional tassel functioning as a nipple pasty.

After Doctor of Sex was added to Annie’s résumé, her next incarnation was as an artist. “I wanted to stimulate more than the male penis,” Sprinkle joked, “so I got into performance art.” One-woman shows, delving deep into Annie’s past, offered therapy and catharsis. Public Cervix Announcement, which Sprinkle has performed in more than a dozen countries, offered a new interpretation of artists sharing themselves with their audience. Reclined on the stage with legs wide open, Annie invited audience members to explore her. Equipped with mini-flashlights, more than 40,000 people got up-close and personal with Sprinkle’s vagina.

Performance has infused every aspect of Sprinkle’s life. It has facilitated introspection and allowed her to educate and inspire others. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she transformed her chemotherapy sessions into fashion shows. To choose a sperm donor, Sprinkle and her partner held a dance-off. To embrace her older and admittedly larger body, Sprinkle created a Marcel Duchamp-inspired video of herself walking down stairs in the nude.

Sprinkle calls the most recent phase of her evolution “adventurous monogamy.” After years of sex with thousands of men, Sprinkle found the “love of her life” in a woman, she said. “A devoted relationship is so much harder, no pun again, so much deeper and more challenging,” Sprinkle said. “Love is the new sex.”

Besides Sex Week, Sprinkle said she attended the Women of Worth spa event. She showed up in her normal, leopard-patterned, porn-star outfit hoping to expand the category of women the group deemed worthy. She described a positive reception and an open dialogue on feminism.

After clitoris close-ups, myriad genres of porn, and a deeper exploration of sex than most students anticipated, Sprinkle conducted a communal, karaoke rendition of “What the World Needs Now is Love.” The song conveyed a more innocent view of sex that Sprinkle says now characterizes her.