The Asian American Association (AAA) last night elected Alex Cho '96 and Jenn Ching '96 to the organization's co-presidency on the basis of their vision for goal restructuring and image enhancement.

The platform presented by outgoing secretary Cho and outgoing educational/political committee chair Ching calls for a redefinition of the Asian American community and a plan to take the club more seriously.

"AAA seems too much to operate within the vacuum that is Harvard," Cho said in a five-minute speech he delivered with Ching before the election. "We don't go out enough to see what it's really like to be Asian American, to see what's going to happen in the real world."

The duo recommended several projects to integrate the organization with the community. "When having a panel of speakers on Asian Americans in politics, [we should] sponsor a voter registration drive in places like Chinatown and Lowell, (Mass.)," reads their platform.

To realize this vision, Cho and Ching proposed "changing the way AAA operates," to "convince people to take the organization" more seriously. In response to an audience question about press relations, Cho said, "Once AAA starts taking AAA seriously, so will the campus."

Cho said one way to do this is to "streamline organization," to maintain a separate list of the 100 or so most active of the club's 800-plus members. This way, "contact with them becomes more practicable," said Ching.

One distinguishing feature of theco-presidents-elect is opposition to compiling alibrary of old tests and lecture notes and videosfor use by AAA members. Cho and Ching believe thatsuch a library would perpetuate the "exclusivemodel minority" myth, and argued that theseresources could be amassed as a result of ageneral student effort.

Cho and Ching defeated three other pairs ofcandidates, claiming a plurality of the 80-plusAAA members who attended the elections in HarvardHall. Steve Lim '97 rounded out a youthfulexecutive board by claiming the vice presidencyover two other candidates.

Lim spoke of his recent rediscovery of "what itmeans to be Asian." Having just graduated a highschool in which 35 percent of the class was Asian,Lim said he was shocked to meet students atHarvard who were the lone Asians in theirhometown.

Lim promised to work towards the development ofricher offerings in Asian American studies.

"I want to know why next year, I can only takeone course on Asian American studies...That's notfair," he said