Having had the opportunity to meet with all four candidates for Young Trustee, we were faced with having to choose among some of the most qualified candidates in recent history. After deliberations, the Asian Students Association is proud to endorse Steven Soto for Young Trustee. As the most qualified candidate to represent the Duke undergraduate student body and in particular, the Asian and Asian American communities at Duke, we feel that Soto’s experiences and perspective best prepare him to be an effective Young Trustee.
Steven Soto shows an unique willingness to engage with and listen to Duke student voices from across all communities, and we believe he will continue to exercise this strength well after he graduates. Through his actions as president of Blue Devils United and as an individual who was involved the Washington Duke Scholars program for first-generation students, Soto has best demonstrated to ASA his ability and desire to build bridges between a range of distinct groups in the pursuit of building a stronger and closer Duke undergraduate community. He is also the only candidate who has previously engaged with our organization’s community at Duke through his efforts to build solidarity among on-campus affinity groups to increase voter turnout and political participation. While the Young Trustee is not an advocate, his commitment to increasing diverse faculty to better reflect the student body and his recognition of the importance of implementing an Asian American Studies program at Duke leads us to believe that he is the best candidate to support Asian and Asian American communities at Duke.
It is for these reasons that the executive board of ASA firmly believes that Steven Soto will bring an unique ability to represent Duke students to the Board of Trustees.
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