The Associated Student Government at Northwestern University has been busy this winter.

In recent weeks, ASG has gone live with four different online projects serving the student community — a ride share board, a ratings site for off-campus housing, a research assistance site, and a student guide to academic majors.

The new programs are part of a strategy to shift ASG’s emphasis toward student-directed projects, an ASG representative told the Daily Northwestern. The student government’s operations director estimates that the ride share program has already saved students $15,000 since it went live in early December.

Now, none of these projects stand at the cutting edge of radical activism, it’s true. But each is intended to make a positive practical difference in the lives of students at Northwestern, and several — I’m thinking specifically of the housing site and the academic majors guide — are designed to equalize information imbalances that put students at a disadvantage in dealing with other university community members.

Student services and student advocacy are too often treated as alternatives, or even opposites. In my experience, a strong student government is likely to be (or become) an activist student government, and serving students’ needs makes a student government stronger.