Leland Cheung is the first Asian American, and the first student, elected to serve on the Cambridge City Council in Massachusetts, reported the Boston Globe. In Cambridge, Asian Americans make up roughly 12 percent of the city’s population of more than 100,000. Under Cambridge’s proportional representation elections, Cheung needed a little more than 10 percent of about 16,000 ballots cast to win a two-year term on the nine-member City Council. Using social networking websites and old-fashioned campaigning, Cheung successfully rallied students, the Asian community, and anyone who would listen around his campaign themes of job creation and bridging the gap between students and residents. Cheung, 31, is working on a business degree at MIT and a policy degree at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
