The two candidates in next year’s presidential elections are making university lecture halls and student clubs a major component of their campaigning, reflecting what will likely be a key demographic in the race for high office.
With President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) closely matched in popular support, attention has turned to cadres of first-time voters who, studies show, are still mostly undecided.
Ma has taken the initiative, meeting university students in conferences and media appearances about once every week for the past few months. Tsai, who became the official DPP candidate last week, says she plans to catch up.
Photo: Liu Wan-chun, Taipei Times
“We have probably at least 17, 18 invitations lined up for school appearances that we plan to fulfill,” said Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青), Tsai’s campaign spokesperson. “It continues Tsai’s longstanding dialogue with university students.”
Sources at Tsai’s campaign said her university appearances would likely differ from Ma’s, who used sessions with students to play simple games and answer trivia questions.
Topics Tsai is expected to cover include more youth-oriented issues such as student competition, the changing global landscape and the experience of growing up — including her own experience as a student in the US and the UK, sources said.
The sessions will be scheduled this month and the next, before the semester ends next month.
Since the DPP primaries began in earnest in March, Tsai’s campaign has relied on numbers of university students to boost her presence in online blogs, discussions and media appearances.
Before and after the four primary debates held last month, Tsai was ringed by a dozen or more university students holding banners saying that she had the support of first-time voters — a presence that campaign officials said played a role in her narrow win.
A poll by cable news channel TVBS and released after Tsai was confirmed as the DPP candidate on April 27 showed Tsai had a 9 percent lead over Ma in the age 20 to 29 category, despite trailing by 1 percent overall.
The gap, Tsai campaign officials said, reflects public knowledge of the importance that Tsai has attached to key issues impacting students, such as skyrocketing housing prices, a lagging job market and stagnating wages.
There is also a disconnect between Ma’s party and university students, Tsai’s campaign said.
A Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker was forced to recant her remarks suggesting a “slap in the face” for St John University students who did not stand up when speaking to Ma at a question-and-answer session.
Caucus leaders later attempted to quell the uproar on campus by saying KMT Legislator Kuo Su-chun (郭素春) was not encouraging physical punishment, but aimed to encourage good manners.
“I think that the president and his campaign are just recognizing now how important first-time voters and especially university students are. Their ideas and ideals for the future are what drive this country,” Hsu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching