As many of you probably already know (via the Times), City Councilmen John C. Liu of Queens and David Yassky of Brooklyn ran for New York City comptroller on Tuesday September 15th. If elected, Liu would become the first Asian American to hold this office. He led the primaries at 38% of the vote, just short of the 40% required to avoid a runoff. Yassky took second with 30%, while Councilwoman Melinda Katz of Queens was third with 20% and Councliman David Weprin of Queens was fourth with 12%.

It has been a competitive race, with the candidates raising $10 million between the four of them. Compare this with the $5 million spent on 2001's election for the same position. Unfortunately, like Liu said in a Chinatown dining hall, "I gotta ask you for two more weeks." I guess we'll have to wait and see!

Dear all,

Apply for the 2009-2010 Columbia Political Review editorial board! Applications are due next Monday, April 27, at 11:59 PM.

The magazine is looking to fill the following positions on next year's staff:
- 2-3 managing editors*
- 6-7 senior editors*
- 2 business managers

- 6-7 campus editors*
- 2-3 copy editor*
- 1-2 art editor(s)
- 3-4 fact-checkers
- 1-2 layout editor(s)
- 1 web editor

Catherine Chong and Alex Frouman were elected last week as Columbia Political Review editor-in-chief and publisher, respectively.

The managing editor, senior editor, and business manager positions require interviews, which are tentatively scheduled for May 5 and 6.

You do not need to have had previous involvement with the CPR to apply for a position on the editorial board. Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions about the given positions after reading the descriptions below.

The following is due by Monday, April 27 at 11:59 PM to karen.hl.leung@gmail.com:

There are three parts to the application: your (1) proposal, (2) resume, and (3) one writing sample (only if your position is starred) or sample web design (only if you are applying for web editor). Please put your (1) name, (2) phone number, (3) e-mail address, (4) class, (5) major, (6) school, and (7) which position(s) you would like to run for at the top of the application. You can apply for more than one job.

The proposal should include a little about yourself and why you’re qualified for your chosen position. This part of the application should mostly focus on what you'd like to see the magazine emphasize, as well as any changes you would make. The proposal should be no more than one single-spaced page.

If you are applying for positions that are starred, also attach a resume and one writing sample (no more than 6-7 pages).

A few suggestions:

Potential managing editors should discuss how they approach editing on the level of argument and style, and how they would handle editing an entire magazine's worth of content.

Potential senior editors should discuss how they would work with writers and handle the day-to-day editing process.

Potential business managers should discuss the administrative and business aspects of the magazine (advertising revenue, changes that would affect the budget, etc.). Business managers are also responsible for coordinating the responsibilities of the campus editors, as well as event planning.

Potential campus editors should discuss how they would communicate with student groups, recruit writers, and generate story ideas for the magazine.
Your application does not need to be long, but it should contain as much insight into the desired position as possible. Current staff members must submit the same application as non-staff applicants, and should specify which position they would like to run for.

Let me know if you have any questions. Past issues can be downloaded at cpreview.org - these might serve as inspiration. Good luck!

Karen Leung
outgoing editor-in-chief, CPR

In lieu of Kal Penn's new job, I wanted to point out that there is an awesomely substantial number of Asian American officials in the White House this term, whose faces we'll undoubtedly see (or not? The media is fickle) for the next four years:

• Eugene Kang - Special Assistant to the President
• Pete Rouse - Senior Advisor
• Chris Lu - Senior Advisor
• Eric Shinseki - Secretary of Veterans Affairs
• Steven Chu - Secretary of Energy
• Kal Penn - Associate Director of White House Office of Public Liaison

Read more about them at Asian Americans for Obama.

This in from OCA and Think Progress:

On Tuesday, State Rep. Betty Brown (R) caused a firestorm during House testimony on voter identification legislation when she said that Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too hard to pronounce:

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told [Organization of Chinese Americans representative Ramey] Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Yesterday, Brown continued to resist calls to apologize. Her spokesman said that Democrats “want this to just be about race.”

Okay, Betty Brown, let me tell you something: this is not about race; this is about cultural and nationalistic misrepresentation. First, what is this "here" to which she is referring? Southern White America? If so, then I'm sorry, but isn't it a little problematic that Betty Brown seems to believe that a certain territory and population claims ownership over what kind of name is easy or difficult to pronounce? This sounds like hyper-patriotism to me, and not the good kind. Second, what is with this division of "you" and "us"? Who are "you" and who is "us"? Is she referring to "You" as the Asian Americans citizen, and "Us" as the imaginary, unicultural, un-colored citizen? Wake up, Betty. What you're speaking to is a process of selective historicity, in which you blindly believe that this imaginary division that you're creating, between an American culture and an incomplete, partly but not fully American subculture, actually exists. But it doesn't. You need to rethink your categories, of what constitutes an Americanism, inclusivity, and cultural understanding.

Top story in the New York Daily News:

New Jersey-born actor Kal Penn, who played a stoner Guantanamo Bay escapee in the movies and a doctor on TV's "House," has scored a job in the White House. Way to go, dude!

Penn, 31, will become associate director in the White House Office of Public Liaison, administration officials confirmed Tuesday. The Indian-American film star will be an emissary to the Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities, along with arts and entertainment groups.

Penn campaigned extensively throughout the country for President Obama last year and was a hit on college campuses.

WHAT! Does this mean that we'll expect Kal Penn vlogs from the White House? Or some Presidential grass burning rituals? Also, there's a spoiler for House, and it's related to this news, but I won't tell it, because I don't watch House.

	News Alert 5:41 p.m. ET Thursday, March 5, 2009 Sources: Sanjay Gupta Withdraws From Consideration for Surgeon General

Nooo.

The Columbia Political Union will be hosting a debate on affirmative action,between the College Democrats and College Republicans:

Sick and tired of the seemingly endless partisan debate? Well then, you're out of luck! Because, on Monday, February 23rd, the College Democrats and the College Republicans will face off in the first debate of the semester, moderated by the Columbia Political Union.

Debaters will be representing their own personal views and debating the following resolution:

Resolved: affirmative action is a policy at odds with equality and fairness

Okay, I would understand if the primary groups involved in this were debate groups. But they're not. They're political groups. So why are students of color groups (whose members are most directly affected by affirmative action) not directly involved in this discussion?

NYU BUILDING TAKEOVER!!!

At approximately 10pm (Feb. 18), students of Take Back NYU! took over the Kimmel Marketplace. They blockaded the doors and declared an occupation! They presented their demands to the NYU administration. They read as follows:

DEMANDS

We, the students of NYU, declare an occupation of this space. This occupation is the culmination of a two-year campaign by the Take Back NYU! coalition, and of campaigns from years past, in whose footsteps we follow.

In order to create a more accountable, democratic and socially responsible university, we demand the following:

1. Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation.

2. Full compensation for all employees whose jobs were disrupted during the course of the occupation.

3. Public release of NYU's annual operating budget, including a full list of university expenditures, salaries for all employees compensated on a semester or annual basis, funds allocated for staff wages, contracts to non-university organizations for university construction and services, financial aid data for each college, and money allocated to each college, department, and administrative unit of the university. Furthermore, this should include a full disclosure of the amount and sources of the university's funding.

4. Disclosure of NYU's endowment holdings, investment strategy, projected endowment growth, and persons, corporations and firms involved in the investment of the university's endowment funds. Additionally, we demand an endowment oversight body of students, faculty and staff who exercise shareholder proxy voting power for the university's investments.

5. That the NYU Administration agrees to resume negotiations with GSOC/UAW Local 2110 – the union for NYU graduate assistants, teaching assistants, and research assistants. That NYU publically affirm its commitment to respect all its workers, including student employees, by recognizing their right to form unions and to bargain collectively. That NYU publically affirm that it will recognize workers' unions through majority card verification.

6. That NYU signs a contract guaranteeing fair labor practices for all NYU employees at home and abroad. This contract will extend to subcontracted workers, including bus drivers, food service employees and anyone involved in the construction, operation and maintenance at any of NYU's non-U.S. sites.

7. The establishment of a student elected Socially Responsible Finance Committee. This Committee will have full power to vote on proxies, draft shareholder resolutions, screen all university investments, establish new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility and override all financial decisions the committee deems socially irresponsible, including investment decisions. The committee will be composed of two subcommittees: one to assess the operating budget and one to assess the endowment holdings. Each committee will be composed of ten students democratically elected from the graduate and under-graduate student bodies. All committee decisions will be made a strict majority vote, and will be upheld by the university. All members of the Socially Responsible Finance Committee will sit on the board of trustees, and will have equal voting rights. All Socially Responsible Finance Committee and Trustee meetings shall be open to the public, and their minutes made accessible electronically through NYU's website. Elections will be held the second Tuesday of every March beginning March 10th 2009, and meetings will be held biweekly beginning the week of March 30th 2009.

8. That the first two orders of business of the Socially Responsible Finance committee will be:
a) An in depth investigation of all investments in war and genocide profiteers, as well as companies profiting from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
b) A reassessment of the recently lifted of the ban on Coca Cola products.

9. That annual scholarships be provided for thirteen Palestinian students, starting with the 2009/2010 academic year. These scholarships will include funding for books, housing, meals and travel expenses.

10. That the university donate all excess supplies and materials in an effort to rebuild the University of Gaza.

11. Tuition stabilization for all students, beginning with the class of 2012. All students will pay their initial tuition rate throughout the course of their education at New York University. Tuition rates for each successive year will not exceed the rate of inflation, nor shall they exceed one percent. The university shall meet 100% of government-calculated student financial need.

12. That student groups have priority when reserving space in the buildings owned or leased by New York University, including, and especially, the Kimmel Center.

13. That the general public have access to Bobst Library.

Along with this, students have issued a

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT

We, the students of Take Back NYU! declare our solidarity with the student [sleepovers] in Greece, Italy, and the United Kingdom, as well as those of the University of Rochester, the New School for Social Research, and with future [sleepovers] to come in the name of democracy and student power. We stand in solidarity with the University of Gaza, and with the people of Palestine.

According to Hyphen Blog:

Apparently, your friend and mine Senator Daniel Inouye slipped a provision into the recently passed stimulus package awarding the $15,000 each the US promised to Filipino veterans last year (if they're US citizens; only $9000 if they're not). Now, all it has to do is survive the committee reconciling the differing House and Senate bills.

... yay?

Whoa. Just last semester Columbia and Barnard were all abuzz over bringing the NROTC to campus after its ban in the 1960s. Most students were against it specifically over the Corps' "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Well, it looks like Obama, who spoke with McCain earlier this semester on bringing back NROTC, is fixin' that. Check out this video from Robert Gibbs, Incoming White House Press Secretary:

"Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, has been tapped to join the Obama administration as Surgeon General." Read more at Racewire.

Interesting article on the first Vietnamese-American elected to Congress. Take a closer look at the reporting in the following exerpts.

"NEW ORLEANS — Soft-spoken, retiring and diminutive, Anh Cao does not appear to fit the role of dragon-slayer."

"Mr. Cao was a refugee from Vietnam at age 8, a former Jesuit seminarian, a philosophy student with a penchant for Camus and Dostoyevsky, an unknown activist lawyer for one of the least visible immigrant communities here and a Republican in a heavily Democratic district."

"Mr. Cao is not large, standing only 5 feet 2 inches by his own sheepishly given reckoning. But he is persistent and has the sort of difficult life story that would have made taking on Mr. Jefferson seem like a lesser hurdle."

"He is only a recent convert to the Republican Party, having been a registered independent for most of his adult life, and has no position — at least not one he cares to share yet — on President-elect Barack Obama's agenda. His politics seem less a matter of ideology than of low-key temperament and a Jesuit-inspired desire to “help and serve people,” as he put it. His mother bundled him onto a military transport plane with some siblings as Saigon fell in 1975 — “She shoved me along with a bunch of relatives,” he said — and he was separated from his father, a South Vietnamese army officer sent to a prison camp, for 16 years. He recalls a letter he received from his father at age 9, sent from the prison: Study hard, and give back to the community."

"Mr. Cao left the Jesuits, set up as a lawyer and began advocating for the small Vietnamese community clustered in the eastern section of New Orleans. Like others in the community, his life was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded his house with eight feet of water. And like others, he quickly bounced back, part of a resilience in the community that was chronicled here in the first months after the hurricane hit. "

"The odds did not look good for Mr. Cao, but he was helped by two circumstances. Whites, fed up with the scandals around Mr. Jefferson, who is black, turned out in force, and blacks stayed home. In largely white precincts, turnout was around 26 percent, while in the blackest precincts, it was only around 12 percent, said Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans demographer and analyst."

"Full article: "History and Amazement in House Race Outcome"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/us/politics/08cao.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

By Adam Nossiter