Golden girl: USG President Nina Langsam '03 in action

You may have spotted her dancing on a Saturday night at Tower Club. Or maybe at the gym, running on the elliptical, while listening to Janet Jackson. And even if you have never seen her in person, she should have appeared in your inbox last Monday night, in the form of her first official e-mail as USG President.

Who is this active woman with a drive to jumpstart new academic and social initiatives to improve the lives of University undergraduates?

She's Nina Langsam '03.

As student body president, Langsam said she plans to address many different projects during her time in office, but she is most interested in improving social life on campus. She already has set up two committees to examine ways to improve campus life for minorities and women. Nina said she would also like "to change the way the clubs are . . . so homogenous." As a member of Tower Club, she believes she is capable of looking at the issue "from the inside out."

A person who friends describe as someone who is outgoing and "loves to laugh," Nina said she wants to have a public personality. "I want people to know me," she said. "I want people to feel like they can approach me."

But Langsam — whose father was once student body president at Columbia University — isn't just about "the job." A fan of the 80's, Nina wrote on her Princeton application that George Michael's 'Faith' is her favorite album. She also sheepishly noted that she loves watching episodes of 'The Golden Girls' and 'When Harry Met Sally,' her favorite movie. 'Friends' is Nina's favorite television show and she is an avid collector of Absolut ads. "My whole room at home is covered in them," she said.

Home for Nina is New Rochelle, New York, where she has lived all her life with her parents and older sister, Melissa, a Harvard graduate who now works for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C. Very close with her family, Langsam has wanted to be a geriatrician since adolescence, partly due to her loving relationship with her late grandmother. "My grandmother had a stroke. I was 12. I visited her every single week until I was 15 and a half, when she died," Nina explained.

Since then, Langsam — an ecology and evolutionary biology major — has been interested in medicine. During high school, she did research on multiple sclerosis at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. She also founded a science magazine.

But the accomplishment that Nina is most proud of is the work she did in high school with the Red Cross. She was president of the Westchester County Red Cross council and has been the Red Cross liaison and project coordinator for the Student Volunteers Council at the University since her freshman year, a post she has relinquished to become student body president.

After she graduates next year, Langsam said she hopes to continue her work in medicine. "I want to work for a year or two doing something health-policy oriented," she said, adding that she plans to enter medical school after that.

Langsam said she never considered participating in student government until her freshman year, when she decided to run for the social chair of her class. She won the election and in March 2000, she organized Jon Stewart's performance on campus. "It was the most successful event at Princeton that year," she said proudly, noting that over 2,000 students attended the free event in Dillon Gym.

Though she says she originally was intimidated by high level student government positions, Nina quickly overcame her initial hesitancy. "The more I did, the more I felt that I was capable of doing," she said. So she continued to add more positions and responsibilities to her repertoire. In her sophomore year, Nina worked with the alumni council and was the campus and community affairs chair for the USG. Now she is interested in expanding the Alumni Careers Network.

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Despite her high aspirations, Nina is hardly as intimidating as one might expect from someone as accomplished as she. Soft-spoken, Nina said she feels equally comfortable with being in charge and just being one of the crowd. "I don't want people to ask for my autograph or to have the paparazzi after me," she joked.

Nina, who is passionatabout her interests and her new post as USG president, emits a lot of energy when discussing her accomplishments and her detailed plans to achieve her future goals. "I want to effect lasting changes that will have a positive impact on current and future Princetonians," she said.