Jooho Lee: APAHW a great success

Last week was Asian Pacific American Heritage Week. You may have noticed a table on Locust Walk, manned by people handing out flyers and selling tickets for different events. Perhaps you walked by without giving it much thought. After all, it's their event.

Judging from the crowd of Asians huddled around the table, and the fact that they handed flyers only to Asians, you may have thought that they didn't even want you to come to their events.

But the truth is, they were trying really hard to get your attention, to get you to go to their events. The people behind APAHW were not out there just to have fun; they were working hard to convert you, not to some Asian religion, of course, but to get you to change your perspective of our campus community and become a better member.

As much as it has been a "celebration of the rich and diverse heritage of Asian Pacific Americans," APAHW has evolved in its 10-year history to become an event that, according to this year's charpersons, Sal Chan, Jeffrey Hsu and Karen Tang, "attempts to educate the entire Penn community about [Asian Pacific Americans]."

They argue that this education is crucial because "there are a lot of misconceptions and stereotypes of [Asian Pacific Americans] that aren't true. We ultimately want to unify the Penn community to become a place where people don't classify each other so much."

It is like a breath of fresh air to be reminded that, rather than a "bonding" event that revolves around a few Asian groups on campus, APAHW is a "bridging" event that is making progress in bringing the entire Penn community closer together.

APAHW 2002 attempted to do this "by not self-segregating as much as possible and, instead, targeting the Penn community at large."

The best example of this was the candlelight vigil, held on the evening of Nov. 5, to raise the community's awareness of racially motivated hate crimes against Asians and Asian-Americans in this country.

Each candlelit bag lining Locust Walk, shining a path toward Houston Hall, symbolized an instance of such a hate crime.

The event was a great success because, according to the chairspersons, "we brought in a much larger crowd than usual and brought in many different types of people from different backgrounds. Random people on the walk who were not [Asian Pacific Americans] were asking some of us what this was for. They showed a general interest in the event, and it showed that people outside the [Asian Pacific American] community care about this issue."

The "bridging" aspect of the event was even more prominent in the fact that many groups, including the Latino Coalition, Queer Student Alliance, ALLIES, Penn Arab Student Society, South Asian Political Awareness Conference and the Penn American Civil Liberties Union, co-sponsored it with APAHW.

Cooperation with other groups was a constant theme during the discussion the chairpersons and I had about the week. For example, the Asian Student Union and the South Asia Society co-sponsored the kickoff event, which showcased various cultural performing arts groups, religious organizations and ethnic coalitions of both Asian Pacific and non-Asian Pacific heritages. This event proved to be successful, "obviously reaching out to a diverse group of students."

Collaborating with other groups has been very successful. The chairpersons excitedly shared that "this year, racial diversity among attendees of APAHW events improved mainly because of the co-sponsorships."

The chairpersons emphasized the importance of working with different groups in making events like APAHW successful. They emphasized that they were "trying to start more events that are more appealing to non-[Asian Pacific Americans] on campus like the career panel and the kickoff event," in addition to the fashion show, which always draws a diverse crowd.

For an event that measures success largely on the number of non-Asian participants, APAHW 2002 also remained hopeful in reaching individuals and the Penn community at large. The chairpersons felt that even "if one person's negative view of the [Asian Pacific American] community has changed, it was definitely a step in the right direction."

I thought APAHW was just a time for Asians to flaunt their Asian-ness and have fun with their Asian friends, which is what I do a lot of times. I was wrong.

Instead, APAHW has helped make Penn a slightly better place than it was two weeks ago. My hat goes off to APAHW and to all of you who participated.

Jooho Lee is a junior History and Political Science major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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