City College Student Elections and Board of Trustees Campaign Updates

By Aminah Jalal
nima96290@gmail.com

Staff Writer

City College’s 2020 Associated Students Election results were posted on the college’s website in early May. 

Candidate Vicki Van Chung won the seat for Student Trustee with 109 votes. As a San Francisco resident and City College community organizer, Chung has advocated, mobilized, and lobbied for increased funding for City College as well as colleges across California. 

They co-founded CCSF Collective at a time when City College’s arts, ethnic studies, and social justice classes were faced with funding cuts. They also created the program City Scholars, where peers served as student advocates in partnership with student retention centers and resource centers, to help students through enrollment, registration, and continuing studies. 

“As Student Trustee, I promise to expand student representation across the governing institute through a community-developed, pre-piloted civic engagement mentorship program,” Chung said. “I promise to remain grounded to my community organizing values, to practicing consistent outreach and democratic engagement. And I promise I will do everything I can to truly ensure students are not spoken for, but rather speaking to.” 

Candidate Tarquin Gaines won the race for Student Vice Chancellor by 245 votes. Gaines has previously served as an Associated Students Senator at Ocean Campus.

“My goal through this position would be to establish an affinity between low-income students and students of color to the school community and work closely with our administrators to extend the support provided to students,” Gaines said. “Connecting all students to campus resources and courses that bear a sense of belonging would enhance the CCSF experience.”

Student Government Elected Representatives include Angelica Nevarez in the seat for Vice President at John Adams Campus with 5 votes. Ocean Campus Senator-Elects are Francia Jimenez, Luxi Li, Juan Pablo Wilson, Cristian Ruiz, Jonathan Ng, Brenton Lai, Jesse Solorzano, Maral Zagarzusem, and Ashley Rosas Rosales, each with an average of 89 votes. 

The election for non-student positions on the Board of Trustees (BOT)  will take place in November. BOT candidate Alan Wong announced on April 26 the early endorsements of faculty union AFT 2121 and the faculty union of San Francisco State University California Faculty Association. 

The early endorsement of AFT 2121 can be credited to Wong’s tremendous advocacy for City College and help in working to secure FreeCity, extending City College into the Sunset District, and fighting to fund public higher education.

“As Trustee, I know Alan would ensure that City College is a core part of the City’s workforce development and economic recovery in light of COVID-19,”  Jennifer Worley, President of AFT 2121 said. 

“I worked on the FreeCity MOU and the Sunset ESL classes with Alan,” City College Trustee Brigitte Davila said. “He knows educational policy backwards and forwards. He is a real problem solver and we’re going to be facing a lot of problems because of the pandemic.”

“I’m very proud to receive these early endorsements and to have secured another decade of FreeCity, and CHEF. I also worked with CFA and will continue even though coronavirus slowed down some of that work,” Wong said. “These endorsements represent the work and relationships I’ve built over time and will help build momentum as I work towards getting more endorsements.”

BOT candidate Anita Martinez looks forward to talking with and listening further to the needs and ideas of teachers, faculty, and students in light of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as planning to campaign virtually for the November election.

“I can see this all being a huge learning experience for City College whether it be students, faculty, or the Board of Trustees,” Martinez said. “Similar to how health practitioners are learning from their shortcomings in preparedness in the news. If we take a page out of their book and see this as something of a learning experience. That we can learn how to make improvements so they can function better, especially as the college has expressed an ambition to go to more distant, online education.”

“For example, akin to mapping the campus and guiding students to where their class is,”  Martinez said. “Something similar to a dean of virtual transactions or relations when it comes to guidelines and a script to go by when emailing students or services for virtually helping students as well as teachers around websites and emails.”

California State Senate Candidate Jackie Fielder also has been endorsed by City College’s faculty union AFT 2121 recently due to her show of interest and concern in fighting for the housing crisis as well as her investment in saving the planet in its current climate crisis. 

“We’re never uniform. Members are very diverse politically, all around the map,” AFT 2121 Political Director James Tracy said. “But, drawing from the comments that people said from the very first online meeting due to the COVID19 crisis, she showed that she really took classroom issues seriously and for teachers and students and showed the willingness for the fight around housing. Members were also very moved by Jackie’s investment to save the planet.”

“Jackie pulled through,” Tracy said. “When Jackie first contacted the union, I advised her to study around City College issues and go talk to the faculty members and students to find out what folks are going through and she did it, her own work, that’s basically it.”