UBPC recruits help of ASG committees

In tomorrow's Daily, you'll find in out a lot about how the Undergraduate Budget Priorities Committee will present its recommendations to some senior university administrators this Friday. Though results will not be disclosed until UBPC meets with the university budget committee, with members including President Henry Bienen, Vice President for Student Affairs Bill Banis and Vice President for Business and Finance Eugene Sunshine, the recommendations will help UBPC rank the recommedations.

UBPC, made up of six members, will present four recommendations: wireless Internet on campus, 24-hour study spaces, downtown Chicago Saturday shuttle and renovations to the ground floor of Norris University Center. These issues were gathered from an open December poll in which students listed services they would like to have at Northwestern. A more recent poll posted in early February asked students to rate what the four recommendations.

Several of the recommendations on the priorities list are issues that members of Associated Student Government have been working on themselves. For example, Kate Pascale's external relations committee has been working with university services to create a weekend downtown Chicago shuttle. The committee also put up a poll recently, asking students about what their usage of such a proposed shuttle would be like. UBPC chairwoman Jessica Wash said that she has been collaborating research with Pascale and the external relations committee, and the committee poll results were shared with UBPC.

ASG Academic Vice President Anna Xu's academic committee's wireless subcommittee has been working with Northwestern University Information Technology to see the feasibility of wireless. The results of a recent meeting with NUIT seem good, said Anna Xu who said it is her goal to have wireless in all the dorms by this upcoming Fall Quarter. The academic subcommittee has also worked with UBPC with its research. It has found that 58 percent, or 11, of 19 comparable (in terms of size and status) Consortium on Financing Higher Education institutions have wireless Internet in their dorm. NU falls in line with the eight universities that don't have wireless Internet in their dorms.

Wireless Internet has been a reoccurring UBPC recommendation since 2001, Wash said. Since then, the university has made certain steps toward a wireless campus with its first Virtual Private Network set up in 2002. Last year, students ranked wireless Internet first in the 2007 UBPC poll. Because wireless Internet was packaged with improving cell phone coverage, the university focused on the latter to increase communication options in wake of the Virginia Tech shooting in April.

The other two options include less involvement on the part of ASG members, although it should be noted that the ASG president is an honorary member in the committee, and the recently retired ASG financial vice president Aneesa Arshad is part of the committee as well.

Some interesting points to be made about the other two recommendations:

• In her report about Norris renovations, Arshad said the suggestion to change the ground floor can be traced back to the ASG president from 1984. A quote from last year stated that completely overhauling Norris with new furniture and a new kitchen area would cost $6 million to $8 million. To renovate the ground floor area that doesn't include the kitchen would cost about $2 million less. However, these numbers are a year old and vary with contractors, Arshad said.
• Of US News and World Report's list of national institutions, 18 of the top 20 universities have 24-hour spaces. NU is one of two that doesn't have such a space. A note to keep in mind is that during the Fall Quarter, library hours were extended after UBPC proposed the change last year. At the beginning of Winter Quarter, university and dining officials were thinking of scaling back the University Library's Plaza Cafe hours because not enough students were using them.

—ALICE TRUONG