Can you tell me a little bit about your background? Where are you from? What is your major? What are your primary activities outside of class?
I’m an E&EB major. I think STEM representation in the YCC is really a priority for me. I think a lot of my platform ideas will cater to STEM students—a lab match program, for instance. I know a lot of students are really concerned about finding labs, especially in their first and second years. Our match program will connect them with PI’s and guarantee every single underclassmen a lab.
But obviously when I’m creating my platform, I’m not just thinking about STEM students. For example, this year, as JCC president, I did a lot of work with the MCAT, LSAT, and GRE. Prepping for these exams can be very expensive. Admin worked with me this year to streamline reimbursements for these exams, and I hope to work to expand that coverage to exam prep as well.
In regards to my background, I’m an FGLI student. Representation is so important to me, and I knew I owed it to my community to run. As an FGLI student, I believe that a lot of representation for FGLI students is very superficial. I don’t think someone can really understand how nuanced and multidimensional the FGLI identity is unless they’re an FGLI student. I was homeless for a period of time, so I think I definitely connect with the New Haven community a lot. I’ve built really strong relationships with many of the local businesses here. I’ve always had the ability to connect with people and to really understand their stories. Supporting students of all backgrounds is something that resonates deeply with me, and I truly owe it to my community.
What prompted you to run for president of the Yale College Council?
Seniors are traditionally left out of YCC purview. It’s reasonable to understand why. Leaders are usually rising juniors. I think a reason why having a senior is good is because they have an understanding of junior year and what it’s like to go through the first 75% of college. Junior year can be a really stressful year where you’re having a mid-college crisis of “What am I going to do post grad?” I think I have not only the mental capacity, but also enough access to the campus community, to know what students need and how to better support students. Being junior class president this year has been extremely challenging, but it’s also been super rewarding. People trust me with texting me at 3, 4 or 5am. They know I’ll always respond. Obviously if I’m accommodating 7000 students it’s going to be even more challenging, but I think I’m willing to make the sacrifices that come up in regards to the traditions of senior year. Yale students are my home. I want to support them during my senior year.
Can you tell us a bit more about your prior experience as it relates to how you’ll perform in your positions?
I think for the junior class president and the class councils, there’s a lot of flexibility. It really depends on the visions of the leader and the projects that they want to execute. I did not take this job lightly at all. I think a lot of my board members can attest to this. Because I was a pre-med student, I focused a lot on global health fundraisers and testified in Congress on behalf of malaria advocacy. I also hosted the school’s first HIV/AIDS awareness fundraiser. This year, we also did a Cystic Fibrosis Foundation fundraiser that got national attention and pulled in thousands of dollars. We also did dark academia night and hosted the Bridgerton Ball, which is super exciting. I think people know how much I care—especially my class, they know how much I really think about them.
What is the most difficult decision you made during your prior leadership positions? How did you arrive at that decision, and what was the result?
The hardest decision was definitely coming out to 7000 students. I hosted the school’s first HIV/AIDS awareness fundraiser, and I wanted to provide a reason for why I was doing the event. When you’re asking students to donate money, that’s really difficult if you don’t have an incentive or an explanation for why you’re doing what you’re doing. I knew that I had to include a personal significance behind it to better fight for the representation that I want to have for queer students.
Another difficult thing is knowing that the events I create are sometimes not going to be for myself. A big part about being in the YCC and JCC is being a second place champion. You have to sacrifice a lot, and you have to give up a lot of your own time and forgo commitment to other clubs. You can’t always participate because you’re running things. For example, I’ve spent so much time planning the Bridgerton Ball, but won’t be able to attend myself. But, that’s part of the rewarding part of doing event planning. You think about other people, not yourself. You think in the interests of the majority and about how to best serve others.
Can you give me a summary of your platform?
I divided my platform into four sections: professional development, health accessibility and student life, long term goals and events, and arts and STEM. My platform is definitely shorter than some of the other tickets. I believe that YCC leaders almost always over-promise and under-deliver. I ran last year with goals like expanding business partnerships, organizing some neat events, and enacting some policy changes that I wanted to enact.
Last year, I wanted to streamline MCAT, LSAT, and GRE reimbursements. I knew that seniors got most of the money, so I wanted to make sure that juniors got a lot, too. As JCC president, I always had to think about the juniors. As YCC President, you have to think about all four grades. Next year, I want to expand professional development resources to include test prep, resources, and subscriptions. I also want to push for affordable summer session courses. Even for students on full aid, you still have to pay $2,400 for some of the classes, so I definitely want to make that more affordable and give every person one free credit. I also want to push for the criteria for Dean’s excuses to expand to include Professional Development. My friend is taking the MCAT today, but her teacher won’t excuse her absence. If she gets three unexcused absences for a class, she drops down to an A minus. I believe that should be a valid reason for a Dean’s excuse.
I also want to help connect Yale students with alumni recruiters at major companies across college majors. This year, I paid a lot of attention to what my class wanted. For example, for a lot of Econ majors, they have to do a lot of networking, which I’m very unfamiliar with, so I tagged along to a lot of those receptions where they brought in like leaders and recruiters at different firms. That’s something I want to continue not because it’s something that I resonate with––I’m like, not a networking person–––but because it’s something that my class needs and I know that it’s something the incoming junior class will need as well.
The next pillar is about health accessibility and student life. I think what happens with YCC is that they come up with really ambitious policy proposals–––so, over the past two years, we’ve had ‘free laundry,’ and we’ve also had ‘all classes need to have retroactive Credit-D-Fail,’ and the adminship shut those down. My strategy has always been to negotiate with admin and come up with a different approach. So I’m going to grant all students one retroactive Credit-D-Fail per year, instead of, you know, nine per year. I don’t think that admin is ever going to pass nine per year.
Mental health and academics are really important to me. I’ve come out in national media to defend Yale during the whole grade inflation criticism. I put out an article on Business Insider. I defended my students, because I think everyone was kind of saying that, ‘Oh all the grades here are baloney, and Yale students don’t deserve to go to graduate schools, because everyone has a great GPA.’ I believe that having policies that support mental health that might also raise the overall GPA of the class is really important, and that includes retroactive Credit-D-Fail.
[I also want to push for] free and subsidized therapy from Yale Mental Health for up to a year if a student chooses to take a leave of absence for mental health reasons. I believe that if you force someone to take a leave of absence for mental health reasons, then you have to support them. You have to provide them with free therapy, and you have to provide them access to your resources. We should also be covering specialized mental health treatment options like cognitive behavioral therapy for OCD. Additionally, students requesting a leave of absence get 72 hours to move out. And that’s really stressful. I believe that that timeframe should be extended. Again, if admin is kicking you out, then they need to provide resources to you.
Also, clubs should have the right to terminate the membership of alleged sexual assault assailants. I did a really big title nine feature for the YDN last year, uncovering how clubs were not allowed to kick a member accused of sexual assault out unless everyone goes through a formal investigation process, which can be traumatizing for survivors. The thing with formal investigations is that they don’t always lead to condemnation of the alleged assailant. And it’s traumatizing. Not every survivor wants to go through that. It’s also a lot of resources, a lot of time just to go to trial, to go to court, to take time from classes to spend time on those. But I think another big reason is that the assailants usually have more social capital, and their families have a lot more cultural and social capital than a lot of the survivors sometimes. So if I’m assaulted by someone who is the son of really wealthy lawyers, I am not going to go through a formal investigation. But having to sit in the same class and the same club with you every single day is, you know, because the university doesn’t permit clubs from expelling alleged assailants, I think that’s unsafe.
[I would also] continue the distribution of free menstrual products, laundry supplies, and sexual health products in all 14 residential colleges. That’s something that I’ve been working on. A lot of my friends work for the Women’s Center. I think their work is great, and I want to support them.
I’m also running for events director, and I’m really excited about that. For events, I have some cool stuff. You know, Yale, Met Gala, and Glambot, which you may have seen before on TikTok. I want to work with incoming JCC leaders to continue the Yale society initiative. I care about the incoming Junior and incoming sophomore class. For me, personally, again, I think society is not a huge part of my life. But it is something that people are interested in that I’m going to be here for them and I’m gonna make sure that they get it.
[I want to create] more networking receptions with recruiters, more dark academia study hours, night at the museums, more Yale-Harvard merchandise fundraisers, a Dream Big Malaria sleep-out, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society fundraiser. This year I did cystic fibrosis and HIV, and then next year I want to do malaria and leukemia.
The last column of my platform is arts and STEM. Again, very important because I’m a STEM person, but I also cannot live without writing and the arts. Currently, a lot of students have to rent out camera equipment from c-cam, but c-cam is meant for graduate students. So, a lot of times they deny undergraduates. Making c-cam more available to undergraduates, you know, a lot of students on campus can benefit from that. I also want to establish the lab match program to make sure that all first years and second year students can match to a lab and allocate funding toward purchasing camera equipment for bass and sterling. Their inventory is always out. I think it’s crazy to think about how many students want to use cameras, but whenever I go to ask, they’re either low in stock or they are just unavailable.
Right now, there’s also a lot of equipment fees associated with taking certain labs and art classes. Labs, you have to buy your lab coats and notebooks. You have to get them at the Yale bookstore where they overcharge for everything. Some classes actually require photography equipment, so just taking care of that and maximizing the number of students who can apply for those courses [by subsidizing that equipment].
Extending the Creative Writing application timeline is something that I’ve heard from English majors and a lot of students who are in humanities. They’re notoriously hard to get into, so hosting a public meeting [with professors who teach creative writing] giving advice on how they review those applications might make the process more transparent. Working with admin to create more non-competitive and minimally competitive fellowships. Right now we have the SCA and the ISA, but those are the only non-competitive ones. But I do think that for a lot of STEM students, they can benefit from funding because research is notorious for underpaying students. A lot of labs are underfunded, so they don’t have the capacity to support students. They either give them minimum wage or no pay at all. If we have more non-competitive fellowships, those students can stay in New Haven over the summer and continue to enrich the STEM culture here at Yale. Additionally, I want to create internship databases, which I did this year at JCC as well. They were really popular.
Another goal of mine is ensuring that every academic management department at Yale has merchandise. And then my last policy point is for indigenous and Native American and Pacific Islander students. Yale’s museums continue to hold many anthropologic collections and remains that belong to Native Americans and indigenous groups, and I believe that funerary objects and skeletal remains should be returned to where they came from.
In terms of long term goals, I want to extend the threshold for free aid here at Yale from 75,000 to 100,000. Currently, if your parents make less than 75,000 dollars a year, you get free aid. But the costs of tuition are rising. And it’s crazy. And I believe that middle class students sometimes are kind of in the middle of this fistfight. So extending the special to 100,000 would accommodate a lot more students.
I’d heard from the financial aid office that the financial aid was rising analogous to the rise in tuition. But that doesn’t account for the 75,000 dollar a year benchmark?
It accommodates people already on full aid. So if I’m receiving full aid, and the tuition happens to rise, then my aid also rises to accommodate that. But let’s say you have to pay like 50% aid. That won’t rise in the same way. It’s going to take a lot of back and forth with admin, but if I expand it to 100,000, then a whole chunk of students between 75,000 and 100,000 will get free aid.
Can you describe a project or idea that was implemented primarily through your efforts? What was your role? And what was the outcome?
This was one of the policy changes that I enacted this year, but pushing toward making our buildings more bird friendly. During migration season, a lot of birds collide with glass buildings, especially SOM Evans Hall. It’s been a problem for years, and there’s been a lot of coverage. But this year, I wrote an open letter to the directors of SOM, just pushing that. And it was also the exact year that they released the statement and said that they were going to experiment with a deterrent film so that birds won’t collide [with the buildings]. I am very conscious about the environment and about our animals, and it’s probably tapping into the stem part of me. It’s something I was really proud of, because I’ve been waiting for action. I’ve heard YDN cover that probably for years, but I think just directly going to administration and telling them what the problem is [and having it solved]…it’s great.
I also made sure that all four grades, starting next year, get formals at commons. Sophomores and juniors this year had to go to the Omni. It’s so expensive because it’s an outside venue. Commons is also just a lot more accessible, right? It’s huge and beautiful. I was really annoyed because seniors get the masquerade and freshmen get the holiday dinner and the freshman formal, all in Commons. So I went up to them and I talked with them and it was a lot of back and forth, but I made sure that from this point on every single class gets a formal at Commons. It’s a lot more subsidized then. At the Omni, I’m literally paying 35,000 for the Ball. I’m kind of a shy person, and I’m not that great at dressing up, but I think it’s something that my class really wants, and I see other people are happy when they go to these types of events, so I’m always going to push for them.
Do you have a preference based on the vice presidents on the other tickets?
I had a vice president in mind when I was running. I absolutely adored her, and I didn’t want to consider anyone except for her. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the time and bandwidth. I think, historically, elections on campus have been very centralized around social media and on who has the most followers or the most connections on campus. I think that’s important, but for me, it’s really critical that I maintain my loyalty to people that I think will do an amazing job. I know that running solo is risky. It’s definitely very, very hard. I can’t think of anyone in recent history who has won on a solo ticket for President or Vice President. But, I was also the Student life reporter at the Yale Daily News for a year, and that gave me a lot of access to student extracurriculars and groups. So, I really understand what each person’s needs and challenges are, and I believe that I’m well suited to fill this role with anyone.
What is your strategy leading up to election day?
It’s been a whirlwind, with the MCAT and the Ball. But I’m doing a lot more in-person outreach. I’m considering doing a buttery crawl to talk to as many people on campus as possible and doing more in person outreach on cross campus as well when the weather’s a little bit nicer. I don’t love social media, but I know that it’s a critical component to winning and securing elections. So I’m definitely gonna post and do all that stuff. But, for me, I was raised in a culture with a lot of strong women. I was raised by my mom and 14 floormates, so I think just storytelling and reaching out to people is really important. Definitely tapping into the freshmen and sophomore classes is gonna be more challenging because the other two tickets are sophomores, so I think I’m gonna go to different cultural centers because that’s also something that really resonates with me—their efforts and talking with people there. I’m going to give it my best shot. I know all the cards I have pulled are kind of a losing hand, but if I go into this with the right intentions and the right people–––and I know, since I am going to go to Med school afterwards, this position does not help me career-wise–––I think my love for the student body really shines through, and I hope that helps.
Do you have any parting messages to the Yale community in advance of election day?
In my Chinese culture, I think one of the hardest things to say is that I love someone. It is so hard. I was taught not to be vulnerable or to ever say that because sometimes your game is out of sight. People don’t always say I love you. And it can happen with family members or with close friends. But I want to come out here and tell the student body that I care about them. And again, like texting me questions and emailing me at the end of the night, students know I always respond. They know that I’m here for them. I want to let them know that I’m a shoulder to lean on. I titled my campaign “Opening the Gates,” because I know that a lot of those gates were really heavy for me when I was a freshman or a sophomore. My focus is just telling the student body that I love and care for them.