Asian American Students Association faces challenges in hosting inaugural Ivy League gathering

“Because Asian-Americans make up a good portion of the population, we felt that it was a good time to raise more awareness,” said Laiyin Li ’12, co-president of AASA. “American studies and African-American studies already existed, but Asian-American studies weren’t going through with the administration. There were more Asian-American courses than before, but progress is still not evident.”

Though they initially hoped to plan a gathering of hundreds of students from schools along the East Coast, their resulting conference, held Friday evening and Saturday, was a much smaller affair.

The East Coast Asian American Students Union hosts an annual conference with large workshops and prominent speakers. Their most recent conference, held at the University of Pennsylvania in March, attracted nearly 1,500 attendees. AASA considered placing a bid to host this conference but decided that the logistical difficulties involved in hosting a conference of this scale would be too great.

Instead, members began planning for a smaller conference for students from other Ivy League schools. “We wanted a more intimate setting than ECAASU could provide,” Li said, adding that she wanted the workshops to be more interactive.

But even hosting a small conference had its challenges. In order to pay for the conference’s expenses, the group solicited sponsorships from businesses and larger Asian-American organizations. They also called in alumni connections. Southwest Airlines and the Chinese American Citizens Alliance both signed on, but the bulk of the sponsorships came from University programs.

Outside funding was difficult to obtain because the conference was new, Li said, adding that recruiting speakers for the conference was also challenging.

Five speakers came to the conference, the most prominent being Edward Chow, secretary of veterans affairs for Maryland. Chow was one of three keynote speakers scheduled for the conference, but both others withdrew at the last minute, Li said.

Dat Phan, the winner of the inaugural season of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing,” also performed Saturday. Before his show, which roughly 100 people attended, the comedian presented his own set of challenges for event organizers, such as requesting a specific type of amplifier.

While organizers hoped for students from each of the Ivy League schools to attend, only Yale sent a contingent. Li and Justine Chiu ’12, the other AASA co-president, said that the final examination schedules at some of the other schools conflicted with the conference, a problem they only realized after choosing a weekend. At the conference’s six workshops, dozens of students, most of whom were from Princeton, attended.

“The workshops were inspiring,” Megan Lui ’14 said. “For example, in the Asian-American Renaissance workshop, Ryan Takemiya asked us to write down all the things that make our heart race and all of our potential majors, then challenged us to get rid of the discrepancies between the two.”

Looking forward, Li and Chiu both said that they hope next year’s leaders of AASA will host the conference again and that the conference gains momentum over coming years, eventually rotating among Ivy League schools.

“Obviously, in retrospect there were many lessons that we learned as to how we could have improved, but overall the board is pretty satisfied given the constraints we had to deal with,” Li said.