Mike Posner, VEGA and Tally Hall complete the Dillo Day lineup. This year’s previously announced headliners include Estelle, The Decemberists, and N.E.R.D.

Duke student and artist Mike Posner, who first spoke to North by Northwestern on May 11 and was confirmed by Mayfest on Tuesday, has been the subject of Northwestern student enthusiasm before he was even approached by Mayfest to perform on Dillo Day, garnering support from hundreds of members of a Facebook group.

“We’ve been aware of him for awhile, because some members of the board were aware of him and were fans,” Mayfest Co-Chair Diana Richter said. “When the group started, that solidified the fact that this guy has Northwestern’s attention.”

Big Sean, who performed on campus earlier this quarter, will also be on stage with Posner.

“They’re a packaged deal. They work well together, and I think Big Sean enjoyed his first time at Northwestern, so why wouldn’t he come again?” Richter said.

DJ Alan Palomo, who goes by the stage name Vega, will also be performing. The artist recently had a set during the Coachella Festival, and was recommended to Mayfest by an agency.

“We listened to his stuff, and it sounded like really great, appropriate music for keeping people pumped waiting for artists,” Richter said.

Michigan rock band Tally Hall will also be present, an act that Mayfest Co-Chair Katherine Hadley said would attract a variety of students.

“They really do appeal to any person’s type of music,” the Communication senior said. “They’re so high energy live that even if you don’t know their music, you can still dance along to them, or at least enjoy them.”

While headlining artists are typically signed earlier in the year, the weeks directly preceding Dillo Day are usually spent looking for supporting acts.

“Starting in November, we’re continuously sending offers, and we generally try to get the biggest name possible, and when those options become exhausted we go to lower price points and smaller artists,” Richter said. “In the last few weeks, that’s when we can start experimenting with the little amount of money that we have left.”

“We’ve had Tally Hall on our radar since September,” Hadley said. “Because they’re smaller bands we didn’t have to worry about them doing massive tours, so we can usually get them on a shorter notice.”

Even though some students expressed disappointment over the 2009 lineup, Richter said that negative reactions happen every year.

“Every year, people complain,” the Weinberg senior said. “We’re dedicating all of our time to the students, and we just want the best for the students, so we’re obviously not going out of our way to make a horrible Dillo Day.”

For Hadley, the diversity of music taste within Mayfest usually guarantees that there is a variety of genres.

“Mayfest sometimes gets a bad rap, because we’re too much into that, too much into this, but we really are a good representation of the whole campus,” she said.

But for Mayfest members, their concerns now lie beyond discussions of the lineup.

“It’s exciting to have the lineup finalized, but on the Mayfest side of things, what matters for us is executing the event,” Richter. “So the lineup is only one fourth of our worries, if that.”

A reform of Freshman Freeze was endorsed nearly unanimously by the Associated Student Government during its Senate meeting on Wednesday.

“We were really pleased,” Interfraternity Council President Lucas Artaiz said. “We are of the mindset that this is the right choice to make, and obviously the Senate understands that.”

The Freshman Freeze was instituted in 1989 when Northwestern was working on deferring Greek recruitment to Winter Quarter, instead of during the first weeks of Fall Quarter. During these four weeks, freshmen are not allowed to enter Greek buildings or partake in any Greek activities.

“It’s an old policy,” said Artaiz, a SESP junior. “From our knowledge, this isn’t something that’s been revisited.”

The reform proposal asked for a reduction of the Freshman Freeze from four to two weeks. It also asked to allow Greek councils to advertise themselves and their events during the Freshman Freeze, pending university approval.

“It’s not necessarily one of those issues where the administration and the student body are at odds,” Artaiz said. “At this point, we’re getting our concerns in front of the people who can make the changes.”

Despite the seemingly wide margin of approval, some students said they were wary of the consequences of a shortened Freshman Freeze. ASG Residential College Board District I Senator Hiro Kawashima said that many RCB leaders felt concerned by the implications of such changes for community building in the residential colleges.

“A shortened Freshman Freeze might hinder RCB programming — the key word being ‘might hinder it,’ but I think it will,” Kawashima said. “But what it will do is that it will put residents in a completely different situation.”

Kawashima also pointed out to what he perceived as inconsistencies in the reform.

“They’re trying to say that they want to bring all the unofficial events outside of campus back on the campus, but there’s a disconnect there, because […] all the off-campus events are events that aren’t officially approved by Student Affairs,” he said.

“There are so many unofficial events throughout the year that go off-campus because of fraternities and sororities that are on probation, so when you’re talking about improving security by bringing events back on campus, they kind of contradict themselves when they do the complete opposite throughout the rest of the year.”

Alyssa Karas contributed reporting.
Updated 5/21 11:42 a.m.: The article has been corrected for spelling. Thanks to commenter Brian Rosenthal for pointing it out.

Redd has been featured on the Comedians of Comedy Tour with comedians like Patton Oswalt. A native of Tennessee, he moved to San Francisco to start his career in comedy and currently lives in Los Angeles.

“Daniel Tosh actually recommended [Redd],” said Communication sophomore Barry McCardel, co-chair for promotions and public relations for A&O, “and we looked into him, and we think he’s hilarious.”

Tickets have not yet sold out for the show, and McCardel noted there would be a significant amount of tickets available at the door. “It’s going to be enough [so that] everyone who wants to go should have no problem being able to get a ticket,” he said. Undergraduates can buy tickets for $10 each, and graduate students can buy tickets for $15 each.

Check out the video below to sample some of Redd’s work.

If you’ve ever been to Paris, the name might ring a bell.

“Ce train est en direction de Poissy. Il desservira toutes les gares,” the crackling loudspeaker would say, as the doors of the dirty train close before lurching onward.

In the tangled mess that is a map of the Parisian public transit system, the red RER A line emerges from the lot, stretching its limbs westward until one of its final destinations : Poissy (pronounced “Pwa-see”), innocuous suburban town in the shadow of the City of Lights. The place I’ve thoughtlessly called home for fifteen years.

It is hard to explain how Parisian suburbs differ from the cookie-cutter American ones with their strip malls, neatly-trimmed lawns and SUVs parked in the driveway. People here expect a charming place, something akin to the small provincial town seen in Beauty and the Beast. But Poissy, like many other medium-sized towns in the area, suffers from a sort of split personality disorder.

On one side, we have the city center, with stores you only browse through once and the market where you can buy fresh produce and counterfeit shoes three times a week. On the city square, an old two-story carousel looks over skateboarding teenagers, and once a year, if you’re lucky, a pseudo-celebrity inaugurates the ice-skating rink. A semi-historical town, it saw the birth of King Louis IX in 1214 and the shooting of a John Travolta movie last December, but not much in between.

On the other, we have the kind of neighborhood you might have heard of in the news, where families are stacked on top of one another in tall affordable housing buildings, with hideous patterns of white, pink and black tiles, and where people sometimes burn cars to express their frustration. A city with a a small settlement of Roms camping on its outskirts that people look at warily. A city with a high security prison that I would hear about when watching late night shows about serial killers.

Despite having spent most of my life there, Poissy had never been much more than a flat backdrop to my existence. My high school being in a nearby town, Poissy only became a place of transit, just like for the many people who jumped on the RER train to head to Paris. The Poissy I knew was dreary. I saw no charm in its cobblestone streets and neatly-aligned bookstores and butcher shops, prefering to catch the next train to excitement in the capital. Poissy was a boring, lifeless acquaintance of a town, one that I didn’t particularly want to get to know better.

It took me a while to discover a more exciting side of my hometown, and oddly enough, it was only after I had left for college thousands of miles away.

It was an odd summer in 2008. I had a rather well-paying job, but the irregular working hours had turned me into somewhat of an insomniac. Some days, I would leave my home before the sun got up to take the first morning train; others, I would walk down the city streets at two in the morning; and sometimes, I would work all night and go to bed as the rest of the world drank their morning coffee. Yet somehow, it was only in these strange hours that I felt my town come to life.

When I walked alone in the dead of night, Poissy suddenly became thrilling. How eerie the carousel looked in the darkness, the ornate horses frozen in time, as bats fluttered from tree to tree overhead.

The marketplace became a delightful ghost town at the crack of dawn, when only a handful of merchants were propping up the gray metal pipes to hold together their fruit and vegetable stands, and I could already sniff the warm odor of baguettes emanating from the closest bakery. Yet, only a few hours later during the day, the colors, sounds and smells would become so much more vivid after a sleepless night, as I would stare in a daze at the strangers stirring their small café noisette on café terraces.

I also came to enjoy the endless stretch of concrete road cutting a straight line across the neighboring forest, when late nights out with friends in the closest town did not end late enough for the first bus to spare us the walk through the woods as the sun rose.

It’s funny how the places I had looked over dismissively for years suddenly gave me chills in those deserted hours, leaving me feeling like I was intruding on something no one had ever seen before. I could hold my breath on the walk home from the train station and only hear my footsteps on the cobblestones, or the occasional shout-out from someone on a balcony with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, both of us surprised to see another human being at this hour.

After a while, my walks to and from places across town became not just about the train I had to catch or the moment where I could curl up under the covers. Poissy might never really be a destination, but I had come to enjoy the itinerary.

When the Associated Student Government passed a bill on April 29 to support Roxana Saberi, a Medill alumna imprisoned in Iran, some may have raised an eyebrow. Why would ASG focus its efforts on an issue so removed from daily student life?

But the members of ASG have been discussing and passing judgment on national and international affairs since the organization’s start in 1969.

Barely a month after its creation, ASG issued a resolution in May of 1969 to officially support a local march in protest of the Vietnam War. The idea of speaking out on larger political and social issues stuck. In subsequent years, our elected student officials have passed legislation ranging from a 1971 bill criticizing the draft, to a 1972 offer of aid for refugees in Bangladesh, to a condemnation the September 11 attacks.

For professor Mark Witte, who has been involved with ASG for nine years, just because some ASG bills call for action beyond Northwestern’s borders does not mean that they are irrelevant to students.

“Vietnam directly pertained to students,” Witte said. “People got yanked out of school. It relates to students directly, certainly, in the sense that students are in the United States, and what happens on the national level rebounds to everyone at the local level as well.”

According to ASG Senate Speaker Samir Pendse, resolutions with national or international focus usually don’t originate from the Senate itself, but from students outside of ASG.

“It’s not something that we seek to do unless it’s a special case like the Saberi case,” the Weinberg junior said. “In the event that it comes before us, we sometimes decide to say yes, we will take a stand or sign on to it for something that we feel strongly about.”

But these resolutions aren’t just for show. ASG has generally included in the resolutions, in addition to its basic opinion, more practical ways of showing support. Most notably, the senate created an ad-hoc committee to focus on divestment from the apartheid regime in South Africa. But most resolutions have either allocated a money to go to foundations or to help students attendi rallies, or have encouraged members of ASG and the Northwestern community contact their state representatives.

But even as early as the Vietnam War, students have questioned ASG’s ability and authority to pass legislation on issues outside Northwestern. On Oct. 29, 1970, a bill passed two weeks earlier endorsing “anti-war activities” was revoked because of the “lack of consensus within the student body.” There were several instances of senators calling for the passage of an “extraneous resolutions” policy limiting non-campus-related legislation, but these efforts never led to much.

For Witte, even if ASG’s actions on national and international issues stay in the realm of symbolism, they are still important.

“ASG exists to handle lunch pail and pothole fillings, and sort of prosaic day-to-day things, and to some extent, it exists to allow students to speak with one voice on important issues, be they university or Evanston, national or in the world,” he said. “I think it’s symbolic, but symbolism can be important. Martin Luther King’s ['I Have a Dream’] speech, what was that but symbolism? It’s articulating a sense of how the world should be.”

Some large increases in funding from last year resulted from the success of certain events. For example, College Democrats were recommended for over $6,000 in extra funding due in part to the success of their Winter Quarter speaker event this year, featuring reporter Helen Thomas.

On the other hand, some groups were recommended less money due to the low popularity of some of their events. For example, the SAFC report stated it recommended a decrease in funding for the College Feminist Fall Quarter speaker “due to a decrease in attendance and lack of appropriate tiers.”

Other groups received less than they asked for, but were recommended to appeal for more funding during Fall Supplemental Funding. This has usually been done for groups whose events have yet to happen this school year.

Check out the graphic below to find out how much money each group requested, what SAFC recommended, and how that compares to last year’s allocations. You can sort by groups’ name, change in funding and total recommended funding.

Some time in early April, I saw that one of my Facebook friends had posted a status about Sexual Assault Awareness Month. “One in four women is a survivor, like me — how many women do you know?” she wrote. I had no idea until that point that she was a sexual assault survivor, and I admired her courage to be so open about her past. But for the small handful of people I know who are open about their experience, many more are unfortunately keeping the silence.

Thursday evening, more than 100 people attended the “Take Back the Night” rally hosted by College Feminists. The night began with a barbecue at 6:30 p.m., followed by a rally and march at the Rock. Attendees discussed ways to say “no” and listened to music from jazz artists and a capella group Extreme Measures. The event lasted five and a half hours.

“Take Back The Night” has given survivors here at Northwestern a platform to break the silence since the event first started in 1986. In the event’s 23 years, one would think that the taboo surrounding sexual assault has broken. This isn’t the only time we talk about sexual assault; we all attended a sex-themed presentation early freshman year that subsequently caused a spike in sex-related paranoia for the next two weeks. But while Take Back The Night and those New Student Week presentations are a great start, we need to be able to discuss sexual violence all year long — and do more than just talk. While I think it is important to give survivors a platform, there needs to be more done to incite them to talk not only to their fellow students, but to authorities that can affect change.

According to statistics supplied by Director of Judicial Affairs Jim Neumeister, there were only 10 formal student complaints to the Sexual Assault Hearing and Appeals System in the past six academics years, excluding the current year. The Northwestern University Police Department online blotter listed only two reported cases of sexual assault this academic year.

That is without the shadow of a doubt only a minute fraction of the assaults that have taken place in the past years. A 2008 Center for Disease Control fact sheet stated that between 20 and 25 percent of college women reported having experienced an attempted or complete rape in college — and that is only the tip of the iceberg. If this statistic carries over to Northwestern, then the number reported to SAHAS should be exponentially higher. After talking to friends and listening to stories, I am hard-pressed to find a college-aged girl who has never been subjected to some form or other of sexual violence or harassment.

This is nothing new, and Northwestern is not immune because of its higher admission standards. We tend to think that this could never happen to us. To make matters worse, I have found that men often don’t realize the extent of the phenomenon. But silence and submission does not make sexual assault disappear — it only makes it disappear from our collective consciousness.

The problem is that despite all we’ve been told about rape, some stereotypes persist: Rape can only happen in poorly lit alleys, not possibly in a dorm. If a girl dresses somewhat provocatively, then surely she must be up for sex. If she’s drunk, it doesn’t count.

Society has resigned women to being treated like sexual objects — whether it be offensive catcalling or a guy touching you inappropriately while dancing in a bar. These are seen as inevitable facts of life for young women — ask any girl after a night at the Keg. This blurry definition of appropriate behavior makes it so much harder for them to know when the line has been crossed, which leads some women to rationalize when they shouldn’t: “I don’t feel like having sex with him, but we’ve been seeing each other for a while, so I guess I should.”

Disregarding aggressive sexual behavior towards women as what “just happens” is an attitude that we all need to address—not just those affected, but the Northwestern community as a whole. Women might know privately that something isn’t right, but are reluctant to report it for fear of humiliation or of being incorrect in labeling something as harassment. If women never speak up, though, then the men who act like this won’t change. The fact that one of the TBTN co-chairs, Weinberg senior Matthew Nusko, is a man is a great step towards expanding the gender discrepancy, but awareness needs to be spread across campus — and survivors shouldn’t ashamed to take action.

It’s a difficult subject — defining sexual assault is tricky, filing a report is scary and many survivors feel guilty. Although I’ve been lucky enough to never have been in a truly dramatic situation, it’s painful and frustrating to have seen a friend be afraid to submit a complaint. By alerting the authorities, survivors get a chance to show that they are not victims; that they have the upper hand over their aggressors and they are in charge of what happens to them.

There are many outlets for sexual assault survivors on campus, including the previously mentioned SAHAS and NUPD. However, SAHAS is not well-known by most students and is often seen as intimidating. Until this is solved, filing a complaint persists as a complicated process, but nonetheless shouldn’t be seen as an obstacle, rather a way to ensure the fairest hearing possible.

Advertising these opportunities on campus would bring forth change. When these organizations will have report numbers in the hundreds, this will by no means be a failure. Instead, it will mean that survivors are no longer afraid to speak up, and we will have taken a big step on the way to changing things for good.

On Wednesday, April 15, 2009, a North by Northwestern graphic incorrectly stated that Vickie Humps had garnered 0.4 percent of the votes in the first round of the Associated Student Government presidential election. The write-in candidate’s name is in fact Dickie Humps.

After years of tireless campaigning as the leading write-in candidate for ASG elections, presidential candidate Dickie Humps came up with a new campaign tactic to appeal to the female voter base: a sex change.

“Women have been notoriously absent from prominent ASG posts for years, and I intend to change that,” said the 2006 alumnus, who now prefers to go by the name Vickie Humps. “By going through this transition to become a woman, I am actually saying ‘yes, we can make a difference’ and I want women at Northwestern to know that someone is there to represent their interests.”

Mother Russia, another prominent write-in candidate over the years, ran alongside Humps.

“I feel that we both have experience being ASG outsiders, and we believed that our combined forces could really get us ahead in this election,” Russia said.

The Vickie Humps-Mother Russia ticket ran on a platform of change, describing the student organization as “ineffective” and “boring.” The main goal of the team was to achieve gender parity in the student senate. Vice presidential candidate Mother Russia also discussed plans to commandeer the Norris Book Store.

College Feminists, Rainbow Alliance and the Russian Student Association had already endorsed the candidates.

But other presidential candidates decried Humps’s sex change as a violation of campaign rules.

“This is nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt,” said presidential candidate and Medill junior Bill Pulte. “I’m appalled, and I hope the election commission will do something about this.”

Members of the election commission were unavailable for comment on the issue.

On Wednesday night, Humps was pacing up and down her dorm room, waiting for a call to announce the results.

“I’ve mostly relied on word-of-mouth for my campaign, but I’m pretty confident,” she said. “I’m obviously the most experienced when it comes to campaigning, and I’m sure this year students have realized how far I’m willing to go for this.”

At 10:30 p.m., Humps’ phone rang. Russia, the only other person in attendance, held her breath as Humps emitted a series of “okays.”

“I only got 0.4 percent of the votes,” Humps fumed, closing her flip phone in rage. “I used to score more votes than other candidates. This election was obviously rigged by some sexist, capitalist pigs.”

“This shows this school is not ready for us,” Russia added, visibly upset. “But you can count on people always being unhappy with ASG. We’ll be back again next year.”

Updated 4/21, 12:04 a.m.
The original version of this article stated that a trial would be held. However, the trial needs to be approved by the Rules Committee before it actually happens. The below article has been edited to reflect this.

Both Muhammad Safdari and Bill Pulte have written letters to North by Northwestern explaining their sides of the situation. Read Safdari’s letter here and Pulte’s letter here.

Associated Student Government may hold an impeachment trial for Academic Director-elect Muhammad Safdari, possibly as early as Wednesday, according to a memo sent by Senate Speaker Samir Pendse Monday evening. This action came in response to articles of impeachment sent to Pendse last night.

The morning before polls opened for the run-off presidential election between Mike McGee and Bill Pulte last week, Safdari accused Pulte of using “extralegal” tactics to win votes in an e-mail that was forwarded to various listservs on campus. Before opening the polls early Friday morning, the election commission issued a statement saying that the e-mail “had several issues of slander, libel, and defamation” and citing it as a violation against the McGee campaign.

McGee won the run-off election with 60 percent of the vote.

Pendse said the articles would have to go through the Rules Committee, led by Parliamentarian Grace Adamson, before the impeachment trial occurred. If the committee votes to bring the case to a trial, the trial will be held Wednesday. However, there are still open spots left on the committee which need to be filled before the Senate can make a ruling, “which isn’t very timely,” Pendse said.

The articles of impeachment, signed by William J. Upton, Steven Eilers and Alessio Manti, charge Safdari with “unduly and unfairly influencing the outcome of the ASG Presidential and Vice-Presidential run off election.”

“Muhammad Safdari has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the office of Academic Director, has betrayed his trust as Academic Director, has acted in a manner subversive and destructive to the integrity and legitimacy of the Associated Student Government, and to the manifest injury of the students of Northwestern University,” the articles state.

Former ASG Parliamentarian Upton drafted the articles for impeachment, saying that he “absolutely” believed Safdari’s e-mail was responsible for the big gap in voter shares in the presidential run-off.

“Sunday afternoon, I decided that I believed that […] given his actions [Safdari] cannot adequately serve the university nor be an effective lobbying force with the administration because of his tactics,” the Weinberg senior said.

Upton, who was a member of Pulte’s campaign team, added that he had contacted Pulte on Sunday to inform him that he was considering writing the articles, but that the former presidential candidate had not been involved in the process. He also stressed the importance of the issue.

“I just want this to be as fair as possible, and I agree with Samir that this should not be a witch hunt. This is something Senate should be taking very seriously,” Upton said.

According to the memo sent by Pendse, if a trial occurs the articles’ authors will present witnesses before the ASG Senate. Senate members will be allowed to question witnesses and bring their own witnesses to testify. The Senate will then debate in a closed session, and vote on the impeachment.

“There’s really no precedent [for situations like this],” Pendse said. He noted that advisor Mark Witte told him the last time something similar happened was five or six years ago, and the person in question was ultimately not impeached.

Outgoing ASG President Neal Sales-Griffin, a SESP senior, said he has not yet read the articles of impeachment. His only role in the trial, he said, would be to ensure that proceedings are “equitable” and possibly to appoint members to vacant spots of the ASG Rules Committee, the group that will oversee the impeachment hearings.

“It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this, and we just want to get it resolved as soon as possible,” Pendse said. “We just want to move forward.”

When contacted, Safdari said he had no comment at this time but planned to make an official statement later in the evening.

Mike McGee declined to comment for this story.

Megan Friedman and Sam Allard contributed reporting.

McGee celebrates with supporters at the Public Affairs Residential College. Photo by Max Brawer / North by Northwestern.

Mike McGee received a call from Election Commissioner Paul David Shrader at 7:21 p.m. Friday. After hanging up, he broke the silence in the PARC seminar room.

“Oh shit, we won!”

The room burst into screams as McGee and Smithburg’s supporters jumped up and down, hugging each other.

McGee will be the next president of Associated Student Government, winning 60 percent of student votes during Friday’s runoff election.

The Communication junior had won 47.9 percent of votes during Wednesday’s general election, just 33 votes shy of Medill junior Bill Pulte’s 48.6 percent. Rules required the runoff election because no single candidate won a majority of votes. Fellow candidate Luke Adams received 2.1 percent of the vote and did not participate in the runoff.

Out of 4,292 ballots cast in the runoff election, 2,526 were for McGee, while 1,684 went to Pulte. There were 82 abstentions, but the abstentions did not affect percentage counts. In the general election, 4,421 students voted.

Weinberg junior Tommy Smithburg, McGee’s running mate, will become vice president.

“It’s just the beginning,” Smithburg said, adding that he was “stunned” and “proud” of the results.

“When Mike won AVP [Academic Vice President] last year, it was a really happy moment,” said Vikram Karandikar, the outgoing executive vice president and a supporter of McGee. “But this feels so right, so good, such an accomplishment.”

McGee expressed relief and excitement about the news of his election, and particularly stressed the importance of his campaign team in keeping him motivated.

“It’s all about the people,” he said. “They’re the only reason I was able to stay up 22 hours a night, it’s thanks to all these guys and the new people that you meet.”

McGee added that he intended to “hit the ground running” and focus specifically on communication with students.

“It’s probably the first thing that we can do, and it’s probably the easiest thing we can do,” he said. “There are still people who don’t know about ASG, there are still people who don’t know about all the positions, all the committees, so I think that’s what we want to do first.”

When contacted to comment on the results of the election, outgoing ASG president Neal Sales-Griffin said that “we’re in good hands.”

A few minutes after receiving the news that they had lost the race by a margin of 40 percent to 60 percent, Pulte and Dawson shared their reactions in the hallway outside of Pulte’s room in the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house.

Pulte with supporters outside the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house after hearing the election results. Photo by Mike Elsen-Rooney / North by Northwestern.

“It’s very interesting to Pat and I, and I think to the rest of our team, that you can go from being 49-48 one day and then the next day you’re at a 60-40 loss,” Pulte said.

Both Pulte and Dawson declined to speculate on the cause of the shift in votes. Pulte also declined to comment about about Thursday night’s e-mail from Academic Director Muhammad Safdari and did not indicate whether he was satisfied by the ASG Election Commission’s response.

In reflection, Pulte said, “we gave it the best fight we had, I think everybody saw that. Because of the Pulte-Dawson campaign we were able to generate record numbers for this campaign. Again I just think this is a very curious situation, a very mysterious situation.”

Dawson said he was disappointed with the loss, but “glad that Bill and I ran; I think we did a lot. I think we ran a good campaign. I am interested in the fact that there was such a huge drop-off in such a short time.”

Pulte called McGee to congratulate him but reached voicemail and decided not to leave a message. “It was a well-fought race; both campaigns fought very well,” he said. “I hope that Mike and Tommy can really produce things that are really going to affect the lives of daily students; that was my goal.”

In Monday night’s presidential debate, Pulte said he would like to continue serving in ASG if he lost the race, but said Friday night he had not decided in what capacity.

Among some of his friends and campaigners outside the Pike house, Pulte commented on a helicopter flying overhead. “I chose to run because I thought there was a place I could have value.” But at least with his loss, Pulte can “go back to running [his] helicopter business.”

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