APA conference to begin

Members of the Asian Pacific American Students' Conference committee are looking forward to their tenth biennial conference. They're looking forward to hearing Filipina pop star Joceyln Enriquez and to attending workshops. And this year, they're looking backwards.

This year's conference is titled, "Strategies of Resistance: Reclaiming the Past, Challenging the Future." The conference begins Feb. 27.

As the title suggests, the conference will pay tribute to the hard work of past Asian Pacific American students. Oberlin alumni, including the founder of the Oberlin South Asian Students Association (SASA), will speak in workshops.

Assistant Dean of Students Shilpa DavŽ and sophomore Sara Lam, co-chair of the student APA conference committee, said the conference is multipurposed. It will emphasize the struggle of Asian-Americans, locally and nationally, in the past and encourage people to look for continued self-determination and self-education in the future.

The three campus organizations co-sponsoring the three-day event are Asian-American Alliance (AAA), the Oberlin Korean Students Association (OKSA), and SASA. The conference co-chairs are Lam, sophomore Eric Shin and sophomore Johanna Almiron.

"The conference is actually a campus-wide event," Lam said. She said she hopes for "total college student interest and participation."

The Conference will be attended by students from Cleveland to Minnesota, according to DavŽ. It will include workshops and speakers discussing activism, gender and sexuality issues, film and cultural production, and strategizing for Asian American Studies. Workshops will focus on organizing, coalition-building, and writing as resistance.

According to the conference platform, the conference "hopes to increase awareness among the larger Oberlin population, confront the institution with its historical amnesia and challenge Oberlin College, a 'progressive' institution of higher learning, to recognize the necessity of Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies to be included within the curriculum."

Highlighting the conference events on Friday will be the performance of Filipina American diva Jocelyn Enriquez at Finney Chapel. The vocal sensation from San Francisco has been featured in A. Magazine, a popular Asian American publication, which portrayed her as "poised to be the first significant Asian American artist on the pop/dance scene." Six workshops will run all day Saturday and will be capped with a campus party.

The keynote address will be delivered by Karin Aguilar-San Juan, professor of sociology at Brown University.

AAA, OKSA, and SASA will mark the upcoming Asian American Awareness Week by sponsoring an Asian American film series. The activities begin Feb. 21 with a free perfomance by Chan-ueng Park called The Song of Hung-bu, an ancient music storytelling art of Korea.