Road Trip Upstate: Campus & Community

Roadtrippin':
Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits
Q-Tip: Amplified
Black-Eyed Peas: Elephunk
Himalayan Project: Wince at the Sun
Warrior Soul: Last Decade Dead Century

I made it up to the state college 200 miles away and back in one day, one piece (one love). It was a good thing for me to go up and speak to a few of the students who came out for a pre-game show far different from what they may have caught on TV. I don't think that it was the most coherent thing that I've done, but I was asked to talk about moving from campus awareness to community activism, and I didn't have a good sense of what the awareness, or consciousness, was on campus. The scene changes so often on college campuses - administrations depend on the turnover taking the wind from the sails of any large-scale movement for change that's initiated by students. Over the years, you hear the same refrain from the few student leaders who've stepped up - we may have a large presence in numbers, but where my people at when I need them to represent?

This time around was no different. We actually didn't have any representation from the umbrella Asian American organization on campus, which was a shock compared to the last time that I was on campus and half the e-board (of more than 15) showed up. I felt the need to shake it up a little, and to get these students to think about how they can and should be connected on campus. And how it only takes a few folks to start a movement. I am regularly inspired by students when they are open and honest about what they're feeling and what they see as the issues at hand. This time was no different, and it just really re-energized me about the work that I want to do to help develop the next wave of leadership from out of students and young people who come from the communities that we're trying to work with all the time. I feel like I am the one who should be listening and learning from them.

Afterwards, I had dinner with an old friend who teaches at the University. We have very similar views about how important it is to make sure that Asian American studies is connected to students and to community. The theoretical navel-gazing of the academy has displaced the roots of the Asian American studies movement - in which Asian American students and community groups came together to demand that the curriculum on campus more accurately represented the histories, lives, and struggles for self-determination of people of Asian descent in the United States.

My interest, and those of some of the folks who are also talking about the work ahead is to support student leadership in state and city campuses, and to empower students to build strong student-focused movements that fight for responsive administrations on their campuses, Asian American studies programs that are more directly connected to the actual communities off-campus, and create the next generation of leaders to take over from those of us that are currently doing this work.