The Associated Students of Cerritos College has a new president and vice president who’ll be taking on the mantle of the students’ voice.

Ashley Yim, a 22-year old sociology major, will lead the college as the new ASCC president for the 2024-2025 school year alongside Fatima Oregon, a 21-year-old computer science major, as the new ASCC vice president.

Yim, who is also president of the humanitarian club, the environmental club and the sociology club, spent the summer in South Africa.

She got firsthand experience of the poverty and struggles the citizens have to live through as the result of the persistent effects of Apartheid.

“I’ve been really interested in humanitarian rights and social justice for a long time. I actually discovered it in middle school – which speaks to my privilege because a lot of people learn about social justice from the moment that they’re born into this world. Once I discovered it I wanted to commit my life to helping injustices and human rights issues,” Yim said.

She said, “I wanted to run for president because I thought being in this position would allow me to help as many people as possible.”

Both Yim’s and Oregon’s moms were critical to helping them.

Yim said, “My mom says to just make sure that I’m doing everything for all the students on campus because sometimes it’s easy to get lost in your position. Just to make sure to keep my head straight and make sure I’m doing everything for all the students on campus.”

Oregon, who was raised by a single mother, said, “I feel like that’s a pretty big part of my story because I take a lot pride in having her as an example – it’s one of my main motivators to be able to pursue education because I know that I’m really lucky to be in the position that I’m in.”

Yim and Oregon are former ASCC senators. This experience helped them hear the concerns of students and faculty across campus and they aim to address these issues in the coming year.

According to Yim, Oregon spearheaded the move to run in the special elections after Yim had lost the presidential election last spring.

Oregon said, “I wanted to run with Ashley because I knew she was running the humanitarian club and she’s president of the environmental club, so I know she’s an active student on campus and she does a really good job at keeping her clubs active. I just knew she’s a really good student and someone who was responsible, so I have a lot of trust in her.”

The feeling was mutual as Yim described Oregon as someone who genuinely wants to help people and is a great listener, making her a great leader.

Oregon was part of the leadership program for the Dragon Kim Foundation where she was given the opportunity to run free folklorico workshops to underserved communities as a high school senior.

She said the program provided a leadership role where she could do outreach to the community, and do something she was passionate about.

She is now an active employee at the foundation as a marketing coordinator.

They ran their campaign on the basis of wanting to address student concerns.

Oregon said the biggest thing she’s observed as a community college student is that there are so many students on campus from different walks of life. She acknowledges that it’s nearly impossible to address every student’s concerns if you’re not in a position where you are able to and have the desire to talk and listen to all the different voices.

“Ashely and I were talking about maybe doing ‘ask-me’ tables with her, I, the student trustee and maybe the chief justice that way students can just come up to us and voice their concerns and so we’re also able to share the resources on campus,” Oregon said.

A major concern they focused on was improving the counseling experience.

Yim said, “We want to give all the students easier access to counseling and also improve the counseling because if students are having to spend extra money and time because of a mistake on the counselor’s part, things like that shouldn’t be happening.”

They also aim to bring in internships by approaching local businesses and companies to sponsor Cerritos college students.

They also hope to make students more aware of the resources the college provides them with by setting up info tables around campus and providing info sessions within classrooms.

“We have so many amazing resources that students aren’t aware of. So it’d be cool to somehow get it out there of all the amazing things that we have on campus,” Yim said.

Oregon believes it is important to take into consideration that there are some students that are just here for education and that’s really their focus and they need resources.

Yim and Oregon were elected as part of a special election that happened when the former president and vice president were removed from office and resigned following allegations levied against them.

Yim and Oregon won the election, which was held from Aug. 28 – 29, with 138 out of 292 verified votes in their favor – they officially learned of their victory on Sept. 3.