AS Elections 2016: Meet Vice Presidential candidate Edward Tang
Film studies and philosophy major Yingham "Edward" Tang, 20, knew he wanted to make a change at SMC after hearing about the controversy surrounding the AS funding of the Nutcracker play last semester. “I heard something about what happened last year, with people that were just voting to make the professors happy, to make the nutcracker concert,” Tang said. “That's one thing I heard, and at the time I said, 'Associated Students should be for students, not for the college.'”
He was introduced to the idea by friend and roommate Steve Maldonado, who at the time was serving as vice president of AS. This semester, Tang is running for vice president against Adrian M. Restrepo.
“I don't really want to beat anyone,” Tang said. “As long as we're pushing the change, I think that's what I want to do.”
According to Tang, his and Restrepo's country of origin contributes to a cultural background that gives each candidate different perspectives. He says Restrepo, who is from Venezuela, has more of an eye out for Hispanic students. Tang, who is from China, is concerned with issues facing Asian students.
“People think of Chinese students differently,” Tang said. “They think Chinese students are rich and they drive the fancy car and they just study hard and show off and everything. I don't think that's representative of most of the students here. And I feel there's a lack of representation here, especially of the Chinese students and all the Korean and Japanese students as well.”
Problems he feels affect the more general population of SMC students are the limited classes for some majors, including nursing and computer sciences. He thinks that we’re not fully utilizing all the resources we have available to the college, including the multiple campuses and empty rooms that could be put to use for clubs. The toilets and schools’ use of water is also a concern.
“We're doing that right now, we're changing the toilets to the water saving ones,” Tang said. “But not all of them. Some of them. We still have a lot to go. And then you see the sink is leaking — we need to fix that.” As far as what makes a good V.P., Tang thinks it has to do with communication with the President. That includes suggesting new ideas to them, supporting them and compromising.
“It's like philosophy — I know I'm right, but I can't be 100% certain that I'm right,” Tang said. “So I don't want to be like super confident on my platform because if the problem — let's say parking — if that's not something popular then it's my fault. So I don't want to push that. I want to actually get people's feedback and hear what other people think, instead of it 100% has to be my idea, it has to be right.”