“Individually, [the incumbents] are nice, intelligent people trying to do good, but they don’t represent you or me,” Cheung said. “They’re all over forty. None of them really relate to what students are going through.”

One of Cheung’s primary campaign issues is highlighting how all Cantabrigians could benefit from a liaison between the universities and the local residents—a role that Cheung says he is uniquely suited to fill.

He often cites a recent study, published on news Web site the Daily Beast, which ranked MIT and Harvard the fifth and 20th worst schools in the country, respectively, in terms of crime against students—a statistic that Cheung calls “shameful.”

“The mindset of the city toward the students shouldn’t be ‘They’re only here for four years,’ but rather ‘We only have four years to convince them to stay,’” he said.

CHEUNG’s CHALLENGES

Cheung says he is well aware that he is facing an uphill battle in his campaign. All nine incumbents and twelve outside challengers are running for a seat.

Cambridge uses a complex ranking system in its City Council election in which voters can list multiple preferences, and relative candidate rankings are taken into account in determining the nine members of the body.

“You only get one vote in a Cambridge election, and it needs to be the number one vote. That’s very hard to get,” says Glenn S. Koocher ’71, a 12-year veteran of the Cambridge School Committee.

Based on past voter turnout, Cheung estimates that he will need to receive about 1,500 first-place votes to claim a seat—amounting to only about 5 percent of the 30,000 combined MIT and Harvard students.

Cheung says he knows that the student vote can be notoriously difficult to mobilize, especially when most students would have to re-register as Cambridge voters.

“Issues like the public school system or Section 8 housing or community policing are very hot topics in the City Council race but don’t have that much relevance to the typical 19-year-old who is living in Adams and has a different set of interests,” says Matt S. DeBergalis, a 2000 MIT graduate who narrowly lost a Council seat in 2003.

In addition, Cheung says many city natives are loyal to the sitting Councilors.

But Koocher said these factors did not necessarily preclude the possibility of election.

“Anyone connected with the Universities’ student population, who ran a skillful campaign using the technological tools that we have now, could mobilize enough people to generate a sufficient turnout to get elected,” he says.

The campaign has been challenging on a personal level as well, Cheung says. He proposed to Yin Zhou, his girlfriend of three years, in August, but he will be busy with campaigning for much of the first three months of their engagement.