By Jennifer ChenThe Daily Northwestern
Over the course of the weekend, the number of Asian-American students on Northwestern’s campus increased by more than 250. Some came by plane, others by car and a few by El.
All came for one reason: the second National Asian American Student Conference.
Hosted in Norris University Center, the three-day conference brought in 269 Asian-American activists from all over the country. This year’s conference was titled “Building Bridges, Connecting Movements.”
Held every two years, the first conference took place at the University of Southern California in 2004. NU won the bid to host the second conference after competing against other schools in the South and Midwest.
Events spanned the usual conference fare: workshops, caucuses, keynote speakers and film screenings. What set the conference apart was its status as the only pan-Asian conference in the country, said director Jenny Lau.
The conference sought to provide students who were already aware and concerned about issues in the Asian-American community with the training and resources they need, said events manager Barnabus Lin, a Weinberg sophomore.
Lin was part of the Conference Board, a committee run by NU and Chicago-area students under the supervision of NAASCon.
“We do the ground work, and they do the planning on top,” Lin said.
Lin said the National Board determined the seven workshop tracks, which included “Gender and Sexuality,” “Educational Equity” and “Campus and Community Organizing.”
Attendees could choose broad-subject workshops on identity and discrimination, as well as more obscure options like cyber activism and indie Asian-American filmmakers.
With first- and fourth-generation Asians, racially mixed, lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender and international students in attendance, everyone had their own reasons for coming.
For Maristell Navarro, a freshman from the University of California at Riverside, it wasn’t so much “Asian pride” that brought her to Northwestern, but concern for her community.
Although Navarro said she had never been much of an activist before college, that quickly changed when Asian women became targets of molestation and rape on her campus.
“It was just Asian women, and when I heard about that, that’s when I started going, ‘We need to do something,'” she said.
Chris Corgiat, whose crop of curly blond hair made him easy to spot, said he came out of concern for a community he had just gotten to know.
“I worked in China over the summer and got to experience it firsthand,” said Corgiat, a Miami University (Ohio) senior.
Todd Sota, 26, came to help the next wave of activists. Sota, an employee of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, was a student when he attended the 2004 conference. Now he is a workshop facilitator.
“I believe college students are at a time in their life where they need to decide what they want to do after college, and whether they want to keep on the activism after college, but on a community level,” said Sota, who is still active in Asian-American organizations.
In the conference’s closing statement, director Jenny Lau said her hope is that “the conversations that took place this weekend and connections made will last beyond the time and space of this conference.”
“‘Be angry all the time, but have strategy,'” Lau said, quoting the keynote speakers. “‘Have some empathy. Find out where the fears are coming from, and most of all, have fun.’ So we hope you had fun, and we’ll see you in 2008.”
Reach Jennifer Chen at [email protected].
