Whether she is knitting clothing, splicing together a film or coming up with new projects for the Yale College Council, Kat Lau ’13 loves to craft.
Lau, a current YCC member and former Freshman Class Council chair and secretary, is running for vice president of the YCC on a five-part platform: improving mental health services, introducing language certificates, extending dining hall hours, expanding gender neutral housing and reforming the YCC itself.
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“I know intimately how the YCC works and will push very hard for the things I think are important,” she said. “So if we encounter resistance from administrators, I’m not going to acquiesce very easily if there’s something students really want, because at the end of the day, YCC’s job is the serve the students.”
Lau cited her work on the YCC’s facilities, gender-neutral housing and events committees as well the YCC’s App Challenge as experience she would build on as vice president.
This is not the first time Lau has run for YCC’s executive board. Last year, she lost to Lauren Koster ’12 in the race for YCC secretary — an experience that she said reminded her of YCC’s focus on policy, as opposed to the FCC’s event-heavy agenda.
Annie Shi ’12, the current YCC vice president, said incoming YCC executive boards have suffered from a lack of institutional memory in recent years. Shi said Lau would avoid that caveat because of her extensive involvement with the organization.
“Candidates for VP typically propose a lot of ‘new’ ideas that have been looked at by previous e-boards,” Shi said. “But when I met with [Lau] last week, she had already gone over the minutes from every meeting this year.”
Lau said she thinks the vice president has the ability to advocate more strongly than the president in the policy-making process, because the president often feels he or she has to “be super-diplomatic.”
YCC presidential candidate Jimmy Murphy ’13, who currently serves alongside Lau as a YCC representative of Davenport College, acknowledged that Lau would not necessarily be an “outsider” if she were elected. But, he added, Lau would still be effective because of her ability to work well with others, both in the YCC and those in outside organizations.
Exit Players co-director Brendan Ternus ’12 said Lau’s involvement with the improv troupe has expanded her engagement with off-campus students and groups, adding that now, even the “most random” student organizations know of her.
Lau is also a FOOT leader, a member of Bulldog Productions, and has reported for the News.