GOOD

MORNING.

Neal Sales-Griffin
CONTENTS
Neal’s Plan for Northwestern
Innovative Leadership that acts on your ideas.

2 Executive Summary
3 The Problem
3 My Plan
3 You
4 Me
4 Experience
5 Philosophy
5 Teamwork
6 Structure
6 Accountability
6 Transparency
7 Reforms
9 On the Issues
10 Disclaimer
 02
GOOD MORNING.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Come Together.
What is ASG? What can you do?
ASG is supposed to be the students’ voice, the Raise your voice: weigh in on the current state
unifying body for undergraduate students. It is of ASG and begin to own a share of your student
meant to be the vehicle for student concerns and government.
ideas for change.

What can WE do?

What is the problem? Build a team that is accountable, transparent and
ASG is not connected with students in the way it effective. A stronger ASG/Student connection will
needs to be. Many students consider it useless or make ASG more effective in advocating for student
inefficient. solutions.

What can I do?

I have the experience to make organizations more
efficient, exciting and inclusive. But, I cannot do it
without your involvement.

How?
Listen and inform to build a stronger ASG/Student connection: Open meetings with the adminis-
tration, President’s questions, Lunch with ASG, ASG at New Student Week, and an ASG Newslet-
ter will make ASG more accountable to and connected with its constituents.

Pursue new projects that matter to students: We can work to improve career services, strengthen ties
with the graduate schools, and make it easier for student groups to ascertain funding for new and
exciting projects.

Follow through on current projects: A more efficient ASG will have the capacity to effectively complete
the current projects that ASG is pursuing: Campus wireless, 24-hour campus, lecture webcasts
and weekend shuttle times.

Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.

GOOD MORNING.
The Problem. My Plan. You. 03

Your Voice.
Your Issues.
The Problem My Plan You
ASG is supposed to be the ASG needs better coordination My platform depends on you.
students’ voice. It is meant and direction to become the Even though I decided to run
to be the vehicle for student student voice. ASG is not a for President and my vision is
concerns and ideas for change. group; it is a collection of to unite students, my candidacy
It isn’t. Most Northwestern individuals pursuing their own means nothing on its own.
students are not connected with goals. My goal is to build Unification is impossible unless
their student government. They a team that is accountable, WE share a vision.
avoid participating in ASG – it is transparent and effective. We
either considered useless or an will stress student involvement,
inefficient political mess. There opening more opportunities for
can be no voice when there is no students to share their ideas for
will to speak. improvement. Once we fully
understand what students want,
ASG currently focuses on we will work together to make it
instituting changes to make the happen.
student experience better. It
has the tools to make an impact:
it has weekly meetings with the
administration and controls
$1.2 Million in discretionary
funds. However, these tools are
underutilized because the student
voice is not actively behind them.
Real reform needs to address
ASG’s root problem: it does not
sufficiently connect with students.

Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.

 GOOD MORNING.
Me. Experience.
{
Dorm President.
Multicultural.
Entrepreneur.
Meet Neal.
Me
I decided to run for President
in order to promote a culture
of collaboration and unite
Northwestern’s student body.
The only solution to ASG’s
inefficiencies and lack of
accountability is teamwork.
Together, we must understand
the issues that Northwestern
students face and the ways
that ASG can address them. I
have experience working with
ASG. I understand the problems
plaguing ASG and their root
causes. I also understand that I
do not have all of the answers.
Strong relationships will help
to forge a team that can more
efficiently pursue solutions. Why
should I lead such a team? I have
experience making organizations
more efficient, exciting and
inclusive; I promise accountability
and transparency, two necessary
elements of any effective
organization; I am ready to build
a team that blends a diversity
of experiences and talents to
optimize ASG’s potential.
04
Experience
I am an inside outsider. I am a first year senator. Most of my
interaction with ASG has been as a student group leader, not an
official. As an ASG Senator, I have actively pushed for more Senator
accountability by working with former Speaker Jesse Garfinkel
to create a weekly Senate update to be distributed to all Senate
constituents.
I have started and operated multiple organizations that are
still running smoothly. Behind the talk and the claims, those
organizations are my record.
-ISBE (Institute for Student Business Education) President:
leading the largest business organization on campus has
allowed me to help build an efficient structure with a diverse
team of talented students.
-Minorities in Business - Founder
-Co-founder of 2 businesses that are still operating
-Teaching Assistant for two entrepreneurship classes
Lived at the rock for a week in a tiny car with no heat in the
winter.
-Learning and Organizational Change major: I have spent a
majority of my time at Northwestern searching for solutions to
make organizations better.
I also identify with a multitude of cultural and extra-curricular
spheres at Northwestern. Here is what I have been involved in:
Cultural Groups:
-Danced Hawaii club luau
-Was a bodyguard for the KASA show
-Served on diversity panel on race relations at Northwestern
-Am helping to charter the National Black MBA Association at
Northwestern
Residential Life:
-Served on the Residential College Board
-Ayers CCI (College of Commerce and Industry) President
Services:
-Volunteer and help teach an entrepreneurship class to low-
income high school students
-Represented Northwestern as an ambassador in Springfield
for the IMAP Grant
Miscellaneous:
-Judged the Rainbow Alliance Drag show
-Served on the Selection Committee for the ASG Financial Vice
President
-Was a security monitor at Jones Residential College for 2
years
-Work until 3AM at the University Library Front Desk
-Helped Plan Rock the Beach
-Served on a panel to prepare new professors for the coming
school year
Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.
GOOD MORNING.
Philosophy. TeamWork.
A direct line to the administration.
Your 24-hour connection.
Philosophy
As a leader, I value
collaboration, accountability,
transparency and efficiency.
The changes that I propose are
built upon these foundational
principles. The following
explains how I would apply
these concepts to ASG.
05
Teamwork
Year after year, ASG has been an organization of individuals. Imagine
a line of archers. Each ASG official has its own bow and arrow. They
are each aiming for an individual goal with their individual power. In
the end, they can only pull their individual string back so far. Each
archer’s arrow falls short of its respective target. What if ASG came
together as one archer? As a team, we can use the collective power
of the student body to pull the bowstring back, aim, and release.
Together, we have the power to hit ambitious targets. My entire
platform centers on this notion. A stronger connection between
ASG and the student body will afford students more opportunities
to share their ideas and concerns with their government. Increased
accountability will strengthen the bond between ASG and students.
More transparency will promote equality within the team so that
everyone is on the same page. Once this culture of collaboration
materializes, ASG will be able to advocate effectively for student
interests.
Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.
GOOD MORNING.
Structure. Accountability. Transparency.
Structure
The structure of the current ASG
erects walls within the government.
Senators do not work well with
each other. The Executive Board
does not communicate well with the
Senate. Neither body communicates
well with the student body. Such
communication is necessary for
ASG to be effective in exercising its
mandate. Here is what I would do to
make ASG more conducive to internal
and external communication:
Accountability
Between elections, there are few times
when the ASG President or Senators
are questioned outside of The Daily
Northwestern or The Chronicle.
Presidents may talk at students during
sterile speeches and office hours for
the ASG President are a good start, but
ASG officials need to be questioned
more often. If the officials are not
answering to anyone, they will not be
required to deliver. Accountability
ensures productivity.
Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.
06
Transparency
If ASG wants to have a good-faith
marriage with students, students
have to know what is going on. Of
course, students have to care what is
going on. But, they also have to be
able to access the information. ASG
ultimately needs more transparency.
If a Northwestern student wants to
know what ASG is talking about, what
it is planning, when it is meeting, and
what is on the agenda, that student
should only need to spend a few
minutes on ASG’s website.
GOOD MORNING.
Reform 07

It’s his passion.

It’s your school.

Recreate the ASG Website: The website should be

an organized, usable asset for students and ASG
The ASG President is supposed to
officials. Specifically, the website will clearly ex-
coordinate and connect. The President
plain ASG’s function, goals and involvement op-
has to synthesize the work of ASG’s
portunities. A monitored message board will allow
various committees, keep them
students to share their opinions and ASG officials
accountable, and promote change
to respond. An improved website will be crucial to
to the organization as a whole. The
improved communication within ASG and between
President also connects students to
ASG and students.
the administration. Through weekly
meetings with the Vice President of
ASG at New Student Week: First impressions are
Student Affairs, the ASG President is
huge. By introducing the possibilities of ASG dur-
the main advocate of the student voice
ing New Student Week, it will be more likely that the
to those holding the majority of the
next generation of Northwestern students becomes
University’s money and power.
more involved with the government.
ASG should not consider “reform” a
President’s Questions: Students think ASG Sen-
dirty word. ASG needs to encourage
ate is bland and executive board members barely
new ideas and work together to see
show up regularly. To spice it up, we will start the
them instituted. Here are the tangible
ASG Senate with a “President’s Questions” segment
changes I would advocate to promote
modeled off of Great Britain’s “Prime Minister’s
a synthesized ASG that effectively
Questions.” President’s Questions will be a time for
articulates the student voice:
students to challenge their officers, heckle them,
and engage in boisterous debate.

ASG Retreat: Senators need to work together so

that they can work efficiently with the little time that

Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.

GOOD MORNING.
Reform
they have. One way to promote cohesion among
Senators and between the Senate and the Executive
Board is to host a retreat that is not dripping with
cliché team-building activities, but actually allows
the ASG officials to get to know each other and dis-
cuss the issues that are important to them.
Lunch with ASG: In the Norris Cafeteria once per
week, ASG officials will have an open lunch to an-
swer student questions and talk about what is going
on in ASG. This will be an opportunity for students
to ask the officials questions and propose new ideas
for the future of ASG.
Senator Reports: Senators are out of touch with
their constituents. In order to make Senators ac-
countable on a continuing basis, Senators will be
required to draft biweekly reports that are sent
to their constituents and posted on the website.
Writing these reports will ensure that Senators are
paying due attention to the goings on within ASG,
thinking about their constituents, and maintaining
an open line of communication between the stu-
dents and their government.
Document Release: An open government and a
connected government requires that students can
discover – with minimal effort – exactly what their
government is and has been doing. Archives should
not be stowed away in some box. They should be
on the website for all to access. Using a complete
08
document release policy as a model, the new ASG
will post all of its reports, meeting minutes and leg-
islation on the website in an easily navigable format.
Blog: The ASG Executive Board will have an on-line
blog on the ASG website so that they can update
ASG events from an internal perspective. Students
and other ASG officials will have the capability to
comment on posted items.
Open Administration Meetings: ASG Executive
Board members have the unique opportunity to
meet regularly with Bill Banis, the VP of Student Af-
fairs. Students should be able to attend some of
these meetings and voice their concerns before the
ordinary order of business begins.
Create a committee to evaluate ASG: Any suc-
cessful institution needs to self-evaluate. Active
students will comprise a working group to identify
ASG’s inefficiencies, listen to student concerns, and
propose concrete reforms to be considered in the
Senate.
Establish a dialogue with peer institutions: We
can only benefit from talking to other Universities.
At the local level, we can coordinate programming
and host joint events. We can share ideas with
other COHFE schools in order to find out what has
worked elsewhere and what has not.
Partner with Northwestern classes to promote
ASG reform: ASG needs to contact professors who
teach classes designed to address institutional
problems. ASG can give them a list of pressing is-
sues for which their classes can choose to propose
solutions. Ultimately, we hope to use students’
classroom work to help add value to ASG.
ASG Newsletter: Publish a monthly ASG Newsletter
detailing the progress of each member of the ASG
Executive Board.
Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.
GOOD MORNING.
On the issues 09

Let his experience

make yours better.
ASG has dealt with – and continues to deal with – a plethora of issues. They have made progress on some;
others have been mismanaged. These are some of the issues that I find important and believe the ASG
Executive Board should continue to address. This list is not, by any means, final or rigid. The new ASG
will have the capacity to take on new challenges and pursue new solutions. ASG’s purpose is to investigate
possible changes and lobby for them; it cannot implement them unilaterally. A primary goal will be to
discover and address student concerns that have been hitherto ignored.

Weekend Shuttles – Our goal is to continue the push to increase access to shuttles on Saturday and Sun-
days, not just to sporting events, but also between the Evanston and Chicago campuses.

Campus Wireless – ASG has been pushing for campus wireless for the past several months, but there still
is work to be done. Our goal is to see campus wireless through to completion and continue to put pres-
sure on the administration to act.

Career Services – Currently, Career Services offers poor on-line resources and insufficient interview prep-
aration tools. Northwestern must invest in its students’ futures by certifying that all of Northwestern’s
career and internship resources are readily available to every student.

SAFB Deregulation – The Student Activities Funding Board doles out around $1.2 Million in funding per
year to student groups across campus. However, the process by which groups come to receive this money
is unnecessarily arduous. Student group leaders should not have to jump through rings of fire to receive
ASG funding if they have exciting projects that are important to students.

Video Lectures/Podcast – ASG should begin to investigate the possibility, if not petition for, a pilot pro-
gram to videotape large lectures and post them online as a library resource or podcast.

Minority Enrollment – Petition for increased minority enrollment.

Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.

GOOD MORNING.
Disclaimer 10
False promises are bad.
This platform encapsulates what
I believe we can accomplish
over the next year. However,
I understand that things can
change. This document is a
guiding light, but it can be
changed as circumstances change.
The most important elements
of my platform are the core
principles that I represent as a
leader.

Your voice. Your change. Your Northwestern.

Neal Sales-Griffin for ASG President
groups.northwestern.edu/neal
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13921919601
nealsalesgriffin@gmail.com 1 (773) 272-5734
April 15

designed by Ivan Li ‘11

Photography by Christopher Wickman ‘09