The past week was either an invasion of parents or an exodus from France for kids studying abroad in Paris. For me, my mom and aunt came in from the States to spend Thanksgiving in the City of Lights.

While they were here, I felt a strange combination of appreciation for both this city that I’ve begun to call my home and for my real home, that place that has seemed so far away in these past three months.

While living the starving college student life definitely has its endearing moments, I think I really fell truly madly deeply in love with Paris this week because I finally did it right. I now know why they say the French invented cooking. I ate at both Les Deux Magot and Café de Flore, the two famous establishments on Boulevard Saint Germain. I sipped on a martini at the Hemingway Bar and marveled at the Christmas decorations that have taken over every district, from the Place Vendome to the Champs des Mars. I finally checked out the Impressionist art I’d been waiting to see at the Musee d’Orsay, ate cheese and crepes for lunch and midday snacks, and watered it all down with café crème after café crème. Between all the delicious seafood, crème brulee and Beaujolais, it’s amazing that we found the time to see quite literally every major tourist attraction in Paris – not to mention the two day jaunt down to the south of France for some relaxation. If I had any doubts about the fantasy world of study abroad before this week, well, I’m definitely convinced now.

It wasn’t only great to really live Paris up right, but I’ll admit, while the November blues never really hit me, I was definitely ready for a little taste of home. One thing that having my mom and aunt around made me really realize was how much I have missed home while being abroad. But when I say home, I guess I mean more of the sense of home.

I consider myself pretty lucky. I remain very close to friends from high school. Despite being spread out over the country now that we’re all in college, we’ve been as inseparable as a geographically displaced group of twenty-somethings can be. I can say without exaggeration that I talk to friends from home nearly every day when I’m away at school. I never felt homesick in Evanston and I think a huge reason for that is because home was never more than a phone call, Facebook message or IM away. But that all changed here. Going from being able to talk to my best friend since first grade every day to … well… just about never really made the distance tangible. There has always been something bitter sweet about being here alone. I have always been able to share my life with those closest to me. My best friend, Pearl, and I have pretty much the same group of friends. We go on our family vacations together. She’s been to Evanston multiple times and has become friends with my NU friends. There’s really no part of our lives that we don’t in some way share. And as trivial as it sounds, French itself has been something we’ve shared. When most kids took Spanish in eighth grade, we took French. Speaking in “franglais” and referencing French culture has just become part of our lexicon. So, while being here and living France by myself has been extraordinary, at the same time, there is a piece of me that knows the mille feuille would taste a little sweeter if I could share it with people from home.

That being said, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, albeit a little late, I have to confess that overall, I do feel truly grateful. Grateful to have lived Paris with glorious decadence and beautiful bohemian modesty, grateful to dread leaving this breathtaking city, but at the same time grateful to have so much waiting for me at home…and to have so much to miss there.

In fitting French fashion, I think I’ve learned that I can have my cake and eat it too.

Read Sara’s previous post l Meet the rest of our study abroad bloggers

Four turkeys, 28 pounds of mashed potatoes, eight pies, two pots of gravy, three bowls of stuffing and more beer and wine than I could count.  Despite the total lack of European recognition of Thanksgiving, my program celebrated the American holiday together in style.

We started organizing our large feast at the beginning of this month, when our program director posted a list of around 30 dishes on the board, and, adhering to the potluck code, we each scribbled our name next to something to bring.  I got stuck making brownies, since I was sick when the list went up, but things could have been worse:  I could have had to make a turkey.  Finding all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods proved more challenging than any of us had anticipated:  Turkeys had to be ordered in advance, sweet potatoes were obscenely expensive, there was no summer squash to be found, and cranberries don’t come in cans.  Despite some minor setbacks we all made adjustments, converted our family recipes into the metric system, and managed to make some delicious dishes.

Then there was the issue of where to keep all of our American delights.  Each of us lives in a small dorm and is confined to a drawer, or at best a shelf in the communal fridge.  As is common with shared fridge space, food tends to mysteriously disappear, with no regard for ownership.  (In one extreme incident an entire half of a birthday cake was eaten in the span of two hours, but usually it’s just an egg, or cup of yogurt here and there.) Since advance cooking was not a possibility we all spent the better half of Thursday scrambling around for ingredients, and cooking together in various kitchens across the student city.  In the end though, this made Thanksgiving feel even more like home because we cooked with one another, and the meal was fresh down to the very last pie that one girl carried in with oven mitts.

We were told that our program directors were taking care of the setup and cleanup, but I never anticipated that they would do so well.  I walked into the second floor of a small campus building into a medium-sized warm room, with a wall of windows and a small kitchenette at the back.  Three large tables were set up in a u-shape, covered with long white table clothes, candles, flowers, bottles of wine, and beautiful place settings.  Our director was sporting a suit jacket with his standard jeans-and-T-shirt get up, and all of our program teachers mingled around in semi-formal attire as well.  As we sat down to eat our director stood up and made a sort of cheesy (would it really be Thanksgiving without some sort of lame toast?) but still well intentioned and much appreciated toast.  He explained that no one in Germany has any idea what Thanksgiving is, but that it has become something that he looks forward to each year.  Since, he said, Thanksgiving is a holiday about two cultures coming together to share in a yearly meal, then maybe our little German-American celebration was in true keeping with the spirit of the holiday.  My friend turned to me and asked me what I was thankful for, to which I responded “friends and family, and friends that are family.” He thought it was trite, but I meant it.

The night was a feast of great proportions, and just like every year we all ate until we wanted to explode.  After four hours of eating, drinking, laughing, and talking we decided to call it a night for a few reasons, the first of which was that we all needed a couch to lie down on in order to digest the ridiculous amount of food.  The second of which was that we knew if we ducked out first we wouldn’t have to do dishes.  We grabbed some leftovers, and a few flowers and headed home through the chilly and barren student city.  We capped off the night with a few movies, and a lot of stretching out on beds and floors.

Even though I couldn’t be with my family or friends back in the states for the holiday, I don’t feel like I missed a thing, because my Thanksgiving was wonderful.  I must say though, on Friday morning I was a little disappointed that no stores chose to recognize the follow-up to Thanksgiving, Black Friday.  But I guess there’s always next year.

Read Alex’s previous post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers

It’s really hard to find a turkey in London. You wouldn’t think so, and neither did I until I looked around Sainsbury’s, our local grocery store. Turkey’s not a big thing to eat here — as one of my British friends said, nobody eats turkey here except for on Christmas, and even then most people don’t like it. Hence my flat’s makeshift bird: a small turkey breast accompanied by two massive drumsticks. It was a mutant turkey, but it was a delicious mutant, so it all worked out.

Small adjustments were a recurring theme this past Thanksgiving. First of all, I had to cook two servings of my mom’s famed sweet potato casserole, since not only did my flat have a Thanksgiving dinner, but so did a big group of my American friends. Half of my night was spent bouncing around between Thanksgivings, making sure I didn’t spend too much time in one place while neglecting my other friends. The other half was spent in the kitchen with my two American flatmates, converting recipes to the metric system and feeling like a grown-up with my own cooking responsibilities.

Thanksgiving dinner in London. Photo by the author.

One of my favorite parts of the day was showing my British friends and flatmates their first Thanksgiving. At one party we made old-school hand turkeys and proudly displayed them on the wall, and in the other I had to defend the tradition of Thanksgiving (even though it’s now kind of associated with killing Native Americans). The Brits came to the decision that Thanksgiving is essentially a preview of Christmas dinner, and that it’s quintessentially American to require two Christmas dinners in the span of one month. I can’t say I disagree.

Though I did have fun, Thanksgiving Day was the first day where I really started to feel homesick. And all you guys with your Facebook statuses saying “Steve is home for Thanksgiving” didn’t help much either. Thanksgiving is nothing if not about family, and long phone calls and Skype conversations with my parents didn’t really cut it. It was my first Turkey Day away from home, and it was tough being in a place that didn’t even acknowledge the holiday’s existence. Luckily, my friends were there to make our London dorms feel like home.

Read Megan’s previous post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers

Sometimes when I reflect on my study abroad experience here in Jordan, I just laugh at all the bizarre situations I get myself into. For example, somehow I ended up practically alone on the dance floor trying to do my best imitation of Arabic dancing at a Palestinian wedding here in Amman.

My neighbor took me to the wedding and she warned me that it would be very conservative. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant but, upon arrival at the wedding hall, I realized that all the women were being ushered to a room upstairs while the men were sent to a separate banquet hall. In the women’s room, the bride, bedecked in a billowing white dress, sat upon her throne in the front of the room beside the groom, who sported a beard about a foot long. She looked a bit bored, to be honest, as she surveyed the dozen or so dancing women below her.

More than 100 women were seated at large tables around the dance floor, chatting, sipping juice and pointing to the younger women on the dance floor. Most wore hijabs and dishdashes (the long cloaks), but the women in the bridal party were all in satiny dresses that would have looked right at home at a 90s prom. Some of the women wore dresses revealing more skin than I’ve seen on an Arab woman since I arrived in Jordan. About a dozen women danced with their arms outstretched, gracefully twisting their wrists and swiveling their hips. Soon the bride came down and joined her sisters and friends while the groom looked on. The three camerawomen followed the bride everywhere, and their live video feed was shown on a floor-to-ceiling screen next to the bridal platform.

The sister of the bride is a friend of my neighbor, so when she saw us seated at a table, she came over to chat and then pulled me up to the dance floor, despite my protests. I must admit that I was quite terrified because I knew I couldn’t bust the same moves I do at the Keg. I have some knowledge of ballroom dancing, salsa and swing, but there wasn’t a guy (besides the groom) in sight. So, I tried my best to imitate the women’s graceful dancing. But as soon as I got to the dance floor, it cleared out, and I ended up doing an almost solo performance while the hundreds of women looked on, many of them pointing and probably wondering why there was an awkward American on the dance floor. The bride’s sister did her best to assure me that I wasn’t completely embarrassing myself, but I was flushed red for the rest of the night.

Thankfully, my dancing was interrupted by the cutting of the cake. A giant, three-tiered cake was carried up to the bride and groom and together they cut it — with a sword. Next was time for the presentation of the gold, which is when the groom bestows gold jewelry upon his bride. The groom, with the help of his mother and sisters, placed each item of gold on the bride and then the bride’s sisters each presented her with a small gift of jewelry. Then the whole family posed for pictures with the groom and glittering bride. My neighbor explained to me that this tradition started because the gold was the bride’s financial security in case she ever got divorced or her husband died. When I was in the northern Badia with the Bedouin tribes, the new brides I met were eager to bring out the boxes with the gold necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings that their husbands gave them.

At the end of the night, after the women had danced for hours, the knock came on the door that the men were coming back in. The women put back on their hijabs and covered up their revealing dresses. Then the doors were opened and then men filed in, shaking hands with the groom. My neighbor and I excused ourselves and left. I had a lot of fun, but I really hope that the camerawomen edit out my little performance from the final wedding video.

Read Laura’s previous post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers

• Roasting pan and rack
• Instant read thermometer
• Kitchen string
• Metal skewer
• Mesh sieve
• Baster and Brush

You can find all of this at any Jewel-Osco.

If college is a rite of passage, then so is cooking a damn good turkey. This year you will not confuse puréed pumpkin for sweet potato casserole, your oven will not implode into a fiery mass of poultry gristle, there will be no salmonella outbreaks from undercooked stuffing, and above all, you will not end up at Burger King. This year, you become an American. Get thankful, and get cooking.

This college Turkey Day guide is a blow-by-blow account passed down from the Native Americans to the pilgrims, from the revolutionaries to the founding fathers, from Mama Brady to Marsha, and now from me to you. It will budget your time, minimize your work, yet still push you past the canned cranberry jelly. Thanksgiving traditionalists, stretch your taste buds and get ready to impress the pants off your guests, or at least loosen their belts a few notches.

This menu will serve 8-10 people with leftovers.

Roasted Turkey with Bay Leaves, Oranges and Red Onions

Photo by bucklava on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

First things first, let’s start with the Bird.

Disclaimer: This recipe is rated Cooking-MA-LT. It contains explicitly culinary language and the touching of a turkey. It is intended for mature (or brave) cooks only. Yes, this means you, so get ready to vanquish your foe.

Ingredients for the turkey

• 1 (12- to 14-lb.) turkeyM
• 1 1/4 tsps. salt
• ½ tsp. black pepper
• 2 oranges, each cut into 8 wedges (look at the cranberry recipe and use one of these oranges for the zest)
• 3 small red onions, each cut into 8 wedges
• 5 bay leaves
• ¾ stick (6 tbsps.) unsalted butter, melted

Ingredients for the gravy

• All the juice that leaked out of the turkey
• About 4 cups turkey (or chicken) stock
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour

What to do:

1. Position the oven rack in the middle and preheat the oven to 425ºF. Place roasting rack in pan and set aside.
2. Warning! This step could get icky! Feel free to wear a rubber glove. Stick your hand in the cavity of the bird and pull out the liver, heart, giblets and anything you happen to find. Then, rinse the bird inside and out, and pat dry. Sprinkle the outside and the cavity with salt. Fold extra neck skin away from the cavity, and use the skewer to pin it down. You did it, the gross part is over!
3. In the large cavity, stuff in 1 onion, oranges and the bay leaves. Now tie the drumsticks together with the kitchen twine and place your well-dressed turkey, breast side up, on the roasting rack to roast for 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, toss the remaining 2 onions in a pan with 2 tbsps. melted butter and set aside.
5. After 30 minutes of roasting, reduce the temperature to 350ºF and brush the turkey with ¼ cup melted butter. Roast for 30 more minutes. Then, scatter buttered onions in the pan and baste turkey with the juices in the pan.
6. For the next 1 ½ to 2 hours, baste (using the squeezy tube and the pan juices) the turkey every 30 minutes (adding water to the pan if the onions get too dark) until an instant read thermometer registers 170ºF. Transfer turkey to a platter and let stand for 25 minutes while you concoct the special sauce….

Time to make the gravy.

1. Transfer pan juices to a big container, skim off all but ¼ cup of fat. Add enough turkey stock to make 4 ½ cups of liquid.
2. Set the roasting pan across two stove burners and place 1 cup of juice mixture into the pan. Boil vigorously while scraping the bottom with the back of a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. This is called “deglazing.” Add the remainder of the mixture and bring to a simmer. Pour gravy through a mesh sieve and discard onions and hard pieces.
3. Whisk the reserved fat and flour in a saucepan and cook the thick mixture (called roux) over low heat, whisking constantly for 3 minutes. Then, add the gravy in a fast stream and whisk like crazy. Keep the liquid moving until thickened, when about 10 minutes have passed.

Country Bread Stuffing with Sage and Sausage

Photo by Brian Teutsch on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

Like students need teachers, like Kathy Lee needs Regis, that’s the way turkey needs… stuffing.

Ingredients

• 1 loaf crusty style country white bread (or whatever is available and sturdy, no Wonderbread)
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 lb. Italian Sausage meat
• 2 cups chopped onions
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1 tbsp. chopped fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh sage, or ½ tsp. dried
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary or ½ tsp dried
• 1 cup fresh parsley
• 1 apple (your favorite kind)
• ½ cup dried currants, raisins or tart cherries
• 1 ½ cups turkey or chicken stock, heated

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Slice the bread into 1-inch cubes and bake until dry, about 15 minutes. Set aside.
2. Butter a baking dish (the bigger the better: this is a lot of stuffing).
3. Heat 1 tbsp. olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and sauté the sausage meat for 5 minutes, breaking it up with a fork as it browns.
4. Transfer the meat to the bread cubes bowl and add 1 tbsp. oil to the hot pan. Now, add onions, celery, apple and herbs and sauté until tender, about 10 minutes. Transfer this mixture to the bowl as well.
5. Stir in the currents, parsley, salt and pepper until mixed thoroughly. Dump mixture into prepared baking dish. Pour the hot stock over the bread and cover in foil.
6. Bake for 40 minutes, then uncover (sprinkling with Parmesan cheese if desired) and bake until brown, about 20 minutes more.

Perfect Potatoes

Photo by jugglerpm on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

Easily the next most important food: the potatoes. These are best when simple and straightforward.

Ingredients

• 2 ½ lbs. Yukon Gold or russet potatoes (unpeeled)
• 2/3 cup whole milk
• 1/3 cup (½ stick) butter

What to do:

1. Place the potatoes in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a rolling boil, reduce heat and simmer until tender when poked with a fork, about 20 minutes. Times will vary based on the size of the potatoes. Keep an eye on these.
2. Drain well, and let sit for 5 minutes until cool enough to peel and toss back into the pot to mash. Turn on the heat to dry out the potatoes for 2 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, warm up the milk in the microwave. Stir butter into potatoes then add warm milk, stirring until combined. Feel free to add more of either to taste. Season liberally with salt.

Sweet Potato Fries with Bacon and Maple

Time to get some colored veggies on the plate. This year, upgrade sweet potato casserole with bacon, maple and tinny canned green beans with lemon and pine nuts.

Ingredients

• 6 sweet potatoes
• ½ lb. sliced bacon in ½ inch strips
• ¾ tsp. salt
• ½ tsp. black pepper
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 2 tbsp. vinegar (champagne, white wine, apple or white balsamic, not regular balsamic)
• 1 tbsp. maple syrup
• 1 tbsp. water

What to do:

1. Preheat oven to 450ºF.
2. Peel sweet potatoes and cut into six or more spears — you decide the size. Arrange in a single layer in a large baking pan.
3. Meanwhile, cook bacon in a heavy skillet until brown and crisp, about 12 minutes. Transfer bacon to a paper towel and then pour bacon fat through a mesh sieve directly over fries. Sprinkle with ½ tsp. salt and ¼ tsp. pepper. Place into the oven and cook until browned, about 45 minutes.
4. Put bacon back in the skillet with olive oil and heat until hot, but not smoking. Then stir in vinegar, maple syrup, water and remaining salt and pepper. Pour dressing over spears and enjoy.

Green Beans with Lemon and Pine Nuts

Photo by t i n a | r a v a l on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

Ingredients

• ½ lb. green beans, cut diagonally into ½ pieces
• ¼ toasted pine nuts
• 2 tbsp. finely chopped flat leaf parsley
• 1 ½ tsp. lemon zest
• 4 tsp. olive oil

What to do:

1. Toast nuts in shallow baking pan for 5 minutes in a 350ºF oven.
2. Cook beans in large saucepan of boiling water plus 1 tbsp. salt for 3-4 minutes or just until they turn bright green, then drain.
3. Toss beans in large bowl with parsley, zest and oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Laced Cranberry Relish

Photo by muffet on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

Homemade cranberry sauce adds a bright streak of flavor across your palate. This is the best, yet some how the jellied stuff ends up on my table every year and is, well, weird. Makes 2 ½-ish cups.

Ingredients

• 1 12-oz. bag fresh cranberries, divided
• ¾ cup sugar or a little more, if you like it sweeter
• ½ cup orange juice
• 1 tbsp. fresh ginger (optional)
• 1 tsp. orange peel

What to do:

1. Bring half the bag of cranberries, sugar, orange juice and ginger (if using) to a boil in medium sauce pan until all sugar is dissolved. Cook a bit longer until it starts getting thicker and bubbles pop in viscous victory, about 10 minutes.
2. Chop remaining cranberries and orange peel with a big knife or a food processor using on-off turns until they are small, but not a paste. Mix this concoction into the pot to finish the sauce.

Pumpkin Pie Crème-Brulée-Style

Photo by pbody on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

Pie is essential at Thanksgiving. In my opinion, pie is essential at all holidays. This puts an easy and impressive twist on the iconic Thanksgiving treat.

Shortcuts: First, because you are already doing so much go ahead and buy a pre-baked crust. It’s not as good, but you have other things to worry about. Second, you can substitute 3 tsp. pumpkin pie spices for the other spices — again, this is a choice.

Ingredients for filling

• 1 15-oz. can pure pumpkin
• ¾ cup plus 4 tbsps. sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 ¼ cups whipping cream
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. ground ginger
• ¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
• Pinch of ground cloves
• ¼ tsp. salt

What to do:

1. Place rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350ºF.
2. Mix pumpkin and ¾ cup of sugar in a large bowl. Then, whisk in eggs one by one, then cream, spices and salt. Pour the filling into the crust (lick the bowl!).
3. Bake for about 50 minutes. The edges of the filling should be puffy and the center steady.
4. Cool to room temperature, then chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or until after eating.
5. After dinner, preheat the broiler (your oven dial should have a setting called “broil”).
6. Sprinkle pie filling evenly with 2 tbsp. sugar and broil until sugar starts to melt and caramelize, turning the pie until all the sugar is brown, about 1 minute. Add remaining 2 tbsp. of sugar and repeat process.
7. Put creation in the fridge for 30 minute to harden the sugar. Serve with whipped cream.

Congratulations! In one day, you have made Thanksgiving dinner and officially became an adult. Not bad for a Thursday. Next up, how to handle yourself at a Christmas dinner with the family and an open bar. A far more tricky procedure.

Welcome to the Bourgeois Pig Café. Leave your Marxist assumptions at the door, although this would be the perfect place to settle in for an afternoon reading the Communist Manifesto. Okay, so it may be located in yuppie Lincoln Park, but I say anywhere you can get a good cup-o’-joe for $2 is decidedly inclusive of the proletariat. And don’t we all like to pretend to be snobby every once in a while?

Then again, snobby’s not a word I’d use to describe this down-to-earth café. It’s a homey atmosphere away from home, so if you’re all tapped out on Evanston cafés and tremble at the thought of another afternoon spent in the library, this is the place to go. Like all the best coffee shops, it blends in with its surroundings. You could almost miss it when walking by because it’s set back in a quaint brick building with a patio and outdoor seating (admittedly not much of a plug at this time of year).

Inside, the wooden tables, brick walls and antique-y doodads — along with the aromas of coffee and baked goods made daily on the premises — provide a great atmosphere in which to chat, eat or stare out the nearly floor-to-ceiling window and ponder the passing of pedestrians outside. Upstairs is quieter and full of books, an area for the more industrious writer intent on meeting a deadline or working on improving his or her crossword puzzle-solving time.

The eats and drinks, for which the Pig has gained recognition time and time again, merit their own paragraph. Coffee. The biggest selection of looseleaf tea in the Chicagoland area (seriously, they have a Wall of Tea). Gelato. A stunning menu of paninis, “classic” sandwiches (see below), salads and what can only be called baked greats. You have to be amused at a place where you can walk up to the counter and order a Catcher in the Rye (a corned beef sandwich on guess what kind of bread). Or maybe you’re working on a paper for that pre-1798 English class; a Henry VIII with a side of A Midsummer Night’s Dream should do the trick. Snobby? Perhaps. Cheesy? Okay, fine. Delicious? Definitely.

If you haven’t gathered as much already, it is worth a day trip on the El to get some serious reading and writing done. It can get uber-crowded on the weekends, so your best bet is to arrive right when they open (7 a.m.), or better yet, go on a weekday and take the express train. Either way, get there early, put in your order, grab a spot upstairs or down, chomp into your Ham I Am, and get to work. You pig.

Grades:

Menu: A
Beverages: A+
Ambiance: A
Accessibility: A-
Overall: A

Neal Sales-Griffin, SESP senior and ASG president, spent 42 hours straight in Norris last week. NSG’s ASG can be criticized for many things, but lack of effort isn’t one of them. ASG has gone through a dramatic cultural change in the past six months, and most point to Sales-Griffin as the catalyst for that change. But has that cultural shift made ASG better at serving the students needs? After a quarter of being in office, has Sales-Griffin accomplished what he promised to do during his campaign in April 2008? Ultimately, has our president’s administration done what it is supposed to do: serve the student body?

Last spring, Sales-Griffin campaigned on the platform of “waking up Northwestern.” In his letter to North By Northwestern after his election, Sales-Griffin set down his goal of connecting ASG to the student body. “The next step is to build ASG’s capacity so that it can act on your ideas and your concerns.” Even now, Sales-Griffin still acknowledges his campaign promises. “I regularly go back and look at my platform…most of the stuff in it is either in the works or already accomplished.”

This may be true, and Sales-Griffin has followed through on effecting great internal reform. But more importantly, ASG’s real effect on the average student has been minimal at best. But no matter what changes Sales-Griffin institutes, until they noticeably affect every student, they will not be enough. NSG’s ASG still needs to prove itself. The most recent senate meeting accomplished very little—the group spent time discussing whether or not ASG should make t-shirts. This kind of internal discussion is not beneficial for the student body. Rather, it’s a step backward in the fight to look effective to the student body.

Please sir, can we have some more?

This is the biggest problem that ASG faces: a universal perception of ineffectiveness. Weinberg senior and ASG Financial Vice President Seva Rodnyansky explained that “half the time we’re not doing anything but combating that perception. It’s a never-ending game without actual services being provided.”

I asked both ASG members and average students to grade our current government on an A to F scale. Of the 16 people from ASG who replied, they gave themselves grades ranging from As to Cs, 13 of which were As or Bs. Of the 15 people I asked from outside the organization, answers ranged from A to F, with 11 grades either Cs or Ds. While this is a small sample, there is clearly a disconnect between internal and external perceptions of how successful ASG has been.

Therein lies the paradox: ASG is most effective when it has the backing of the student body but the student body will not support ASG until it proves it can be effective in a way that impacts individuals. As Hunter Atkins, Medill sophomore said, “If ASG had accomplished anything in the last year that has impacted my college life, wouldn’t I have noticed it?”

This is emblematic of another major problem — ASG does do a lot for students, but doesn’t do an effective job of letting us know that they are responsible for it. For example, NULink is run by ASG and oNe Northwestern was based out of ASG, as was NU Decides. Without effective marketing though, the ASG name remains disaffiliated from these programs and thus, those who deserve the credit for them don’t receive it, perpetuating student ambivalence and ignorance of ASG’s accomplishments.

Turn and face the strange

The first priority Sales-Griffin set when he came into office was to clean the office. “It seems like a minuscule thing, but honestly one of the biggest things in terms of having people be more collaborative was having a clean working environment,” Sales-Griffin explained. “Collaborative” is a buzz-word in Sales-Griffin’s administration; everything is about team work and the massive cleaning symbolizes that goal.

The cleaning of the office was just the first in a list of ASG’s accomplishments for the first quarter of this administration. Achievements also include the oNe Northwestern campaign, NU Decides and the newly instated Saturday intercampus shuttles. However, when asked about the biggest accomplishment of the past few months, most ASG members pointed to internal organization changes, both formal and informal.

Formally, Sales-Griffin created two new positions on the executive committee, both of which were filled in the past week. In addition, the “Rosenthal Amendment,” which requires senators to hold office hours and open forums to increase accountability was recently passed. ASG committees are now also required to submit proposals before they begin to work on any project or initiative, soliciting senate feedback and approval.

Changes in senate culture and in the mindset of the people involved were some of Sales-Griffin’s most obvious informal changes. The executive board members have felt the full force of that change according to Communication senior and Public Relation director Sasha Shaikh, who explained “every single person on executive board came in with the attitude that [change] was going to happen. We came here in full gear.”

That culture shift started with Sales-Griffin and has moved down the ranks to the senators. Patrick Dawson, Weinberg junior and two-year senator said that in during his first term, the executive board and senate operated independently, but now “it’s a lot more collaborative. The senate and the executive board are aware of what each are doing and work towards similar goals.”

So ASG is now excited, passionate, and willing to put in the effort. Sales-Griffin remarks that the “change has been realized in regards to people’s work ethic, sacrifice, drive and passion. It’s one of the most intangible things you can have in an organization but it’s one of the factors that affect productivity.”

Honey, I ignored the kids

On May 15, 2008, North by Northwestern reported that Sales-Griffin intended to effect “meteoric change” in ASG. He expressed a desire to change the fact that “nobody knows what ASG does, and most people frankly don’t even care.” He also wanted ASG “to be intuitive and welcoming to every student.” While it’s clear that ASG has changed internally, after a quarter of hard work, have students started taking notice, as promised?

Not really. Internal change seems to have come with a price. Jesse Garfinkel, Weinberg junior and previous Speaker of the Senate explained that “it’s so much easier to pass a bill changing the organization than it is to change stuff on campus…the students don’t care how we solve a problem, they just care that it gets solved.”

Former Clerk James D’Angelo, a Communications senior, attended Senate meetings regularly this quarter and was even more critical of Sales-Griffin’s bureaucratic changes. He is adamant that internal change “makes everyone feel better about doing stuff, but when it comes down to it, if ASG code is great or awful, what does that do for actual student life?”

Even executive committee members are unsure of the outward success of these inner changes. Rodnyansky admits that there is “nothing you can point to and say ‘Look! Here’s what happened!’ A lot of the legislative changes don’t necessarily impact the students as much as other things could be.”

On the bright side, the organization has more in the works for Winter Quarter and every executive board member made it clear that the upcoming quarter will be full of activity. We can be on the lookout for a winter activities fair, a Dillo Day-type event, a focus on Evanston elections and most importantly, the launch of the new and improved ASG website.

We want change

Now ASG needs to focus on the students. Enough time this year has been spent on internal struggle, reform and codification. It’s time for Sales-Griffin to do what he really promised, to bring ASG back to its priority of improving the life of the average Northwestern student by lobbying the administration on our behalf. ASG carries a lot of sway with the administration and they should use it to their advantage. With that in mind, if the student body wants something to change, they should go see ASG. One sit-down meeting can yield incredible results if we voice our discontent to the executive board instead of to one another.

ASG can and should be a great organization that brings about significant change on campus. As individuals, they are hard-working, passionate and enthusiastic about their jobs, with much of the enthusiasm originating from the president himself. But if we gauge the current ASG’s success by the amount of faith the student body has in student government and to what extent it can rally students to help accomplish change, then Sales-Griffin and his administration still have a lot of work to do. Sales-Griffin’s mantra for the year is “Expect More.” To him and to ASG, I say this: we do.

The recent popularity of RahmFacts.com is one example of this trend. The site contains a series of facts (28 in total) about Emanuel, and that’s it. The concept of a fact site is not new (ChuckNorrisFacts.com does the same thing) but the interesting thing about RahmFacts is that the facts are real. ChuckNorrisFacts were funny because they’re exaggerations, RahmFacts are funny because they’re true.

While the facts paint a rough sketch of Emanuel, it takes some recollections from people who knew him in his younger days to help fill in the details. Emanuel’s reputation as an abrasive, hard-charging, partisan is certainly accurate, but it’s not the whole story. We can explore Emanuel’s character through a carefully selected collection of facts from the site and some first hand testimony to help explain them, and perhaps gain some insight about what kind of Chief of Staff he will be.

Rahm Emanuel can dance ballet better than you.

While it’s hard to empirically prove this one, there’s a good chance it’s true. Emanuel is a graduate of the Evanston School of Ballet (he grew up in suburban Chicago). Emanuel continued dancing through college. Sarah Schwartz, a friend and former girlfriend of Emanuel’s at Sarah Lawrence College, remembers that his biggest extracurricular commitment during freshman year was the Modern Dance Program.

“He was a renaissance man. When I think of big man on campus, Rahm was that guy at Sarah Lawrence,” Schwartz said. “He was not one of those people who breezed through life,” Schwartz added.

Some people have trouble reconciling Emanuel’s reputation as a belligerent politician with his career in ballet. Obama himself made fun of this contradiction in a roast of Emanuel from three years ago, saying that Emanuel was the first person to adapt Machiavelli’s The Prince for ballet. It involved a lot of “jumping, spinning” and “kicks below the waist.”

Rahm Emanuel’s Rabbi lets him work on Rosh Hashanah.

This is an anecdote that has been widely reported: Emanuel’s rabbi gave him permission to work on the bailout plan over Rosh Hashanah. Emanuel comes from a strong Jewish tradition: his father was an Israeli immigrant, he has attended synagogue his entire life, and his middle name is Israel.

Emanuel has a deep investment and interest in Jewish life, but, once again, we see that his passion and engagement cannot be confined by one thing. Schwartz said that during her freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, she attended some of the campus Hillel events and never saw Emanuel there. She suggests that in such a Jewish school, there was less of a compulsion to actively seek out Jewish life. This no doubt left him more time to pursue his myriad other interests.

Rahm Emanuel’s mother calls him Rahmbo.

The nickname seems to fit his reputation, and while it’s difficult to prove this fact, it’s easy to believe. Rumor is, the only person in the Emanuel family more vulgar than Rahm is his brother Ari, an agent and the inspiration for the character Ari Gold (his other brother is a world-renowned doctor). Examples abound to support this assertion, including his famously sending a dead fish to a pollster who had made him angry, and his stabbing a table with a knife yelling “dead, dead dead!” about Republican “traitors” at a Clinton dinner.

But the testimony of those who knew him suggest that while his belligerence may be a way to achieve what he wants, it is not necessarily a defining or permanent quality. “He had no enemies [at Sarah Lawrence],” Schwartz said. She remembers that when they used to have dinner together he would immediately leave the table and start mingling. “He was a real politician,” she said.

A student from the class that Emanuel taught in the School of Communication at Northwestern in 2000 said in their CTEC “Professor Emanuel is an energetic speaker and teacher, yet a laid back person which is a great combination.”

This assessment suggests that Emanuel can bring the fight when he wants to get something done, but does not need in some deeper way to be abrasive or confrontational. It seems that his “Rahmbo” tactics are a way of getting involved and making an imprint. He approached politics with the same passion he had for dance, but instead of leaping and jumping to accomplish his tasks, he mailed dead fish and stabbed knives into tables.

Professor David Zarefsky in the School of Communication was introduced casually to Emanuel when Emanuel was a Communications grad student at Northwestern. Later when Emanuel returned here to teach, Zarefsky said Emanuel “gets what he wants and doesn’t let things get in his way.” But he also acknowledged that in a personal capacity, Emanuel seemed laid back.

This portrait of Emanuel begins to reveal what Obama (who has known Emanuel as a colleague and friend for years) saw in Emanuel that made him want to offer him the job. Emanuel will be engaged on all kinds of issues with all kinds of people. Evidence of this is already emerging. In the past few weeks, Emanuel has been talking up a storm with officials from both parties on issues that range from the auto industry to Iraq and Afghanistan. He will complement Obama especially well. Obama is methodical and focused–he will have more success dealing with one issue at a time in depth than jumping around doing the leg work–and that’s where Emanuel will come in.

While Emanuel will no doubt produce a batch of new scare stories and RahmFacts in the coming years, his broad passion and relentless need to be engaged that will mark his tenure in the Obama Administration more than his confrontational style. In the meantime, Emanuel is leaving the controversy to his impersonators and conducting his business profanity and death threat free. Perhaps he’s taking measure of the challenges that lie ahead. He’s got a big job, and that’s a fact few could argue.