Asian Pacific American Alum Credits Assistance, Campus Resources

To the Editors:

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and I think back on my experience as a student at Oberlin in the late 1970s. My involvement with the Asian American Alliance introduced me to Asian American community issues and activism. At the time, the most important position on campus for Asian American students was the Asian American Counselor Coordinator. When I entered as a third-year transfer student, the position was vacant after Harvey Hayashida left. The College had cut the position to half-time, and not surprisingly, the position was unfilled. AAA fought to make the position full-time, and during my senior year at Oberlin, Addy Liu (OC ’78) became the full-time AACC.

Addy was the one who inspired me to apply to law school. She introduced me to the Asian Law Caucus, a nonprofit civil rights organization in the San Francisco-Bay Area. Through a forum organized by AAA, I learned about the community’s and ALC’s efforts to keep low-income, elderly Filipino tenants from being evicted by developers from their home in Chinatown, the International Hotel. I later became a law clerk and then staff attorney at ALC. After Addy left to attend law school herself, Grant Din came and through his efforts increased the enrollment of Asian Pacific American (APA) students at Oberlin to double its size within a few years. The AACC position not only served to recruit APAs to come to Oberlin, but provided a valuable connection to students with APA communities throughout the United States. I remember meeting groups of Oberlin APA students as they visited community-based organizations in Oakland Chinatown during Winter Terms accompanied by the AACC. Many of these students returned to these organizations to work after graduation.

After years of not having much contact with Oberlin, I’ve become active with the Oberlin Asian Pacific American Alumni Association and represent the group on the Alumni Council Executive Board. I’ve had the opportunity to come back to campus four times this academic year.
Talking with APA students on campus this year, I am heartened to see that kt shorb, the APA intern, has played the same critical role that Donn Ginoza (OC ’74), Harvey Hayashida, Addy Liu, Grant Din, Tommy Woon, Valerie de Cruz, Jill Medina (OC ’88), Linda Vo, Shilpa Davé, Theo Copley (OC ’95), Michelle Shim (OC ’97), and others played in supporting APA students and being a bridge to APA communities. At the same time, I am saddened that after over 20 years since I was a student at Oberlin, these critically important positions for students of color and LGBT students remain in jeopardy. These positions are particularly important post-9/11, as students of color, especially Muslim, Arab and South Asian students, are experiencing more fear, discrimination and backlash. Reducing this support would be a short-term and fiscally questionable solution to the College’s financial woes, but the effect would be a long-lasting one that will bring into question, once again, the College’s commitment to social justice.

I offer the assistance of APA alumni to work with students, the Multicultural Resource Center staff, and the College on how best to enhance and institutionalize support for students of color and LGBT students including recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and staff and development of programs and curriculum that reflect the histories and experiences of our diverse nation.

These are difficult times. As the first school to admit African-Americans and women and one of the few to recruit Japanese-Americans who were relocated to internment camps during World War II, Oberlin must again rise to the challenge of staying true to its mission and values.

–Deeana Jang
OC ’79
Alumni Council Executive Board Member
Oberlin Asian Pacific American Alumni Association