Students' Fight for Asian American Studies an Uphill One
APAs are the largest minority at Syracuse University, but the college still lacks a program.
Ellee Kim, a senior at Syracuse University, grew up in a neighborhood full of "Jewish people and Caucasians." While Kim is able to converse fluently in Korean and English, the 21-year old Korean American "always felt that there was something lagging" in her sense of cultural and socio-political awareness, and eagerly hoped to fill that void in college.
"In high school, you never learn enough about [Asian American topics]. I figured in college you could learn more," said the Long Island native. But once she got to Syracuse, she soon learned there were no Asian studies or Asian American studies programs. So last month, she went to the arts and sciences college in a quest for answers.
Kim is not the first to ask why, at a college where AAs constitute the largest minority (6.8 percent of the undergraduate population), there is an African American studies program and an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) studies program but nothing geared toward the more than 800 AA students at Syracuse.
"On campus, I see a great need for other people to see the struggle my parents and my ancestors went through," said Kim. "A lot of people see Asian [culture] only as pop culture. They think Asia is a fun place but they don't really understand it. It's really frustrating."
But when Kim took her case to the Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Susan Wadley, she didn't feel any less frustrated.
"[Wadley] didn't seem too supportive," she said, describing the dean as "intimidating and discouraging" when it came to pursuing any sort of AAS programming. Kim is not alone in her sentiment.
In May 2006, a year and a half before Kim went to find answers at the College of Arts and Sciences, a group of about a dozen students set about organizing a campaign to bring a program resembling AA studies to Syracuse. The group, then headed by student Jonathan Han, aimed to eliminate the discontinuity of the previous student effort.
There had been a disjointed though ongoing campaign for AAS programming since the late 1990s, after the infamous "Denny's incident" in which six AA students and one Caucasian student were attacked in a Denny's parking lot in Syracuse, NY after being turned away from service at the restaurant. So Han and his fellow students tried to drive through an AAS program, talking to numerous faculty, students, and Multicultural Student Affairs personnel, and brought their case to the college.
But Han, now an alumnus working in the campus' ministry who also continues to write for the college newspaper, said that despite the group having presented a proposal, student petition, and supporting statements signed by faculty willing to teach courses, Dean Wadley "was not receptive" to the students' efforts, even though they had presented a proposal for "Transnational Asian Studies," a diluted version of what students wanted, which merged both Asian and AA studies in an attempt to satisfy both parties.
He blames the rejection, in part, on the "paradox of being Asian American."
"People think 'Are they a minority or not?' It's always been black or white," said Han. "It blows my mind that [the administration] doesn't see the need for Asian American studies. We say we want to be a cutting edge school but we don't walk the walk."
Dean Wadley says she has been "more than willing to talk to [students]," and that their effort in the spring of 2006 was "not a serious campaign. [...] They came to see me once and then I never heard another word from them in over 15 months." Students should have further consulted her and been more well-organized, she said, adding that in any case, the school does not currently have sufficient staff and faculty to carry such a program.
"Should we have Asian American studies? Certainly. But we don't have the faculty for it," said Wadley. "I can't do anything for it if I have no staff or faculty."
Han disagrees, pointing out that several faculty members had shown willingness to be involved in and teach possible AAS courses at Syracuse, and that the student effort was very well-organized and well-researched.
And there lies the grand discrepancy. The fight for programming, the attempt to show a need for Asian and AA Studies in colleges like Syracuse, denigrates at some point into a he said-she said dispute that only further serves to undermine any progress. And students like Kim and Han end up never being able to take a course in AA literature or race relations throughout their college careers.
One of the students from the May 2006 campaign, Carina Lui, is now a sixth-year dual degree candidate in her last few semesters at the university and has still never had the opportunity to take an AAS course. More people, she said, are beginning to notice the empty spot in ethnic programming.
"I've talked to many people in the past six years I've been here," said Lui. "They also think there's a void that needs to be filled."
But until that void is filled, students will have to keep on plugging away. Han writes the occasional column lamenting the lack of AAS programming at Syracuse, hoping that his words will stir the AA student populace to action. For now, with many of his original group now either graduating seniors or alumni, hope is all he has left, but it is good enough.
"When you start giving up hope, that's it," said Han. "There's always hope. The last thing we can give up is hope."
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