In a ceremony that took an hour longer than anticipated, the Asian American Association (AAA) held elections last night at the Science Center. Candidates discussed their plans for community building, increased teamwork, and bridging cultural gaps.

After giving a three-minute speech that was followed by a question and answer session, Sanby Lee ’08, who is also a Crimson editor, and Mei Y. Pen ’07 were elected co-presidents, replacing Sarah L. Paiji ’06 and Eveleen S.S. Hsu ’07.

In their speeches, the candidates discussed a narrow range of issues that generally focused on organizational unity and community strength.

The election, which was originally slated to be in a classroom in Emerson Hall, was moved to the Science Center because of the large voter turnout.

According to Paiji, the hot-button issues that candidates discussed were rooted in geographical and age differences between members.

“The themes [of the election speeches] involved creating a greater sense of community within membership—particularly in getting upperclassmen involved with underclassmen, and getting the South and East Asians working together,” Paiji said.

The AAA has been perceived as being predominantly East Asian, she added.

Despite these challenges within the organization, the reigning president expressed her optimism about the future of AAA and its new officers.

“I feel like AAA is in good hands,” Paiji said. “We had a lot of strong board members this year, a lot of them are staying on, and we think they are going to take AAA to new and better things.”

Others elected last night included Nancy A. Hung ’08 and May J. Luo ’08, who won the vice presidency.

Chen Xie ’08 was elected treasurer. Qingni Lin ’09 was elected educational/political chair, which will be her first office in AAA. Ivy A. Lee ’09 and Chen Li ’09 will serve as social chairs. Yi Chen ’09 and Alex C. Liu ’08 were elected outreach chairs. Jimmy Zhao ’08 won the position of publicity chair, and Amy G. Zhou ’07 maintained her place as webmaster.