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The Daily Northwestern Monday, April 8, 2013
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ASG elections
Nonverbal campaigns launch overnight By JOSEPH DIEBOLD, JUNNIE KWON AND CAT ZAKRZEWSKI the daily northwestern @josephdiebold, @junejune423, @cat_zakrzewski
The four tickets for Associated Student Government president and executive vice president officially kicked off their campaigns early Monday morning, gathering for launch parties and publishing websites and social media accounts. The four candidates, who had to gather at least 300 signatures by 5 p.m. Friday to run, were allowed to campaign verbally over the weekend but were forbidden from flyering, chalking or publishing online communications until 12:01 a.m. Monday. The election will be held April 19. Weinberg juniors Aaron Zelikovich and Henry Brooke, SESP junior Benison Choi and Weinberg junior Danny Kim, SESP juniors David Harris and Josephine Lee, and Weinberg junior Ani Ajith and McCormick junior Alex Van Atta are the four tickets that will be on the ballot. Each of the presidential candidates brings leadership experience from both inside ASG and out. Harris is wrapping up a two-year stint as services vice president and also served as public relations co-chair for Dance Marathon. Ajith finished his term as Speaker of the Senate on Wednesday and is the president of Delta Tau Delta. Zelikovich has served as ASG’s Greek caucus whip and sits on the Sodexo student board of directors. Choi has been a senator, served on multiple ASG committees and is active in Project Wildcat
and Camp Kesem. Campaigning also began Monday in races for academic vice president and student life vice president. Weinberg junior Sofia Sami is running unopposed for academic vice president and Bienen freshman Harrison Flagler will take on Communication junior Anna Kottenstette, a Daily staffer, for student life vice president. The presidential campaigns kicked off at four separate launch events late Sunday night and early Monday morning. Ajith launched his campaign Sunday night at The Black House with about 20 members of his core campaign team. He said he and Van Atta were running because they could offer both “experience and perspective.” He said he would focus on student engagement as president. “It’s about being a friend and an ally to every single group on campus,” Ajith said. “We want to make sure ASG is a partner and not an obstacle.” Harris launched his campaign Sunday night at The McCormick Tribune Center, where he and his running mate gave speeches and strategized with their campaign team. “ASG has an immense opportunity to improve the Northwestern student experience in tangible ways,” Harris said. “But it consistently underperforms. We’re running to address the gap.” After spending a year without participating in ASG to observe the student government as an outsider, Choi said he decided to run to shake up the status quo and give students more hands-on involvement in ASG’s work. He launched his campaign early Monday morning with
Skylar Zhang, Melody Song, Cat Zakrzewski/Daily Senior Staffers
AND THEY’RE OFF ASG president and executive vice president candidates officially launched their runs for office with campaign staff events early Monday morning. The election will take place April 19.
an event at The Rock. “ASG should be working to have everyone work together, but it serves as a roadblock to student organizations
Car crash victim laid to rest By CIARA MCCARTHY
the daily northwestern @mccarthy_ciara
For the second time this academic year, the Evanston Township High School community gathered at the First Church of God Christian Life Center to mourn the loss of a student. About 1,200 people gathered Saturday morning at 1524 Simpson St. for the funeral of Kevoyn Cox, an
ETHS senior who died in a car crash last month. Cox was traveling in a speeding car March 28 when the car hit a tree in the 2900 block of Howard Street. Paramedics pronounced Cox dead on the scene at about 10 p.m. Four other passengers in the car were transported to the hospital in stable condition. Friends and family of the ETHS student filled the pews of the First Church of God, gathering to mourn his loss and celebrate his life. Rev. Monte Dillard oversaw the
proceedings. Women from the Agape Life Outreach Center performed a dance in remembrance of Cox, and Cox’s relative Chinnel Williams read an original poem she had written for him. Relatives described Cox as a funloving man who “enjoyed life to the fullest and lived everyday as if it were his last” in an obituary printed in the program. Cox’s cousin Devandrew Johnson recalled “good times and » See FUNERAL, page 10
Ciara McCarthy/The Daily Northwestern
‘GOOD TIMES AND GOOD MEMORIES’ Pallbearers carry Evanston Township High School senior Kevoyn Cox’s casket from the First Church of God Christian Life Center on Saturday. Cox died in a car accident last month.
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and progress in general,” he said. “I’m here to bring it back to the people.” Zelikovich chose to have a private
launch event Sunday at Hillel. Also » See CANDIDATES, page 10
City ER wait times higher than average By OLIVER ORTEGA
the daily northwestern @olly2014
Though the idea of waiting an hour in the emergency room before seeing a health care professional might seem unsettling, there’s a good chance it could happen if you’re an Evanston resident, a new database shows. The federal government recently released an online database with ER wait times and other measures of efficiency from hospitals across the country, allowing patients to compare how their local hospitals stack up against state and national averages. At Evanston’s St. Francis Hospital, patients generally wait a little more than an hour, on average, in the ER before seeing a health care professional, which is twice the national average of 30 minutes, according to the database. Evanston Hospital has patients wait 41 minutes — almost 10 minutes more than the state average of 33. Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago doesn’t fare much better: Data shows on average it’s a 50 minute wait before patients see a health care professional. Why the delay? Dr. Morris Kharasch, chief of emergency medicine at Evanston Hospital and the three others within the North Shore University Healthcare system, argued comparing data such as ER wait times for hospitals in urban cities like Chicago and rural areas with smaller populations is misleading. Kharasch said anyone living within
a 25-mile radius of Evanston Hospital might wind up in its ER, resulting in large volumes of patients. But people with serious and life-threatening injuries like broken bones and troubled breathing are seen immediately. “What you have to do is build some perspective,” he said. “We’re in a city area with a high value of incidents and some hospitals are catch-all in the communities they serve.” Dr. James Adams, the head of emergency medicine at Northwestern Memorial and a Feinberg professor, also said the numbers can be deceiving. Sometimes patients who would be better served in another department come into the ER and are forced to wait while staff attend to more serious cases, thus driving up the average wait time, he said. “Someone will come in and say, ‘I was playing basketball and hurt my knee,’ and a nurse will put in an order for an X-ray and then go elsewhere where time is more critical,” Adams said. When a hospital’s ER is up to capacity, it will go on bypass, meaning ambulances are directed to take patients to another hospital. Kharasch said that hasn’t happened recently at Evanston Hospital, as dispatchers can decide which one of the four hospitals in its system to send patients to without causing bottleneck points. Bypass is rare at Northwestern Memorial, Adams said, although it did » See ER, page 10
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