CAMPUS
NOURISHING OUR ROOTS LEGACIES OF TUFTS ASIAN STUDENT ACTIVISM
Editor’s Note: Billy Zeng and Rohith Raman are both currently active members of the Tufts Asian Student Coalition (TASC) and the South Asian Political Action Community (SAPAC), respectively.
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istorically, student activism within the Asian American community has been focused on advocating for physical space and visibility to better connect Asian students. Student activists pushed for the creation of many of the Tufts’ Division of Student Diversity and Inclusion (DSDI) centers in light of targeted violence against minority groups. The Asian American Center (AAC) is one of eight identitybased centers on campus, and, traditionally, it has struggled to receive the necessary administrative financial support and resources to support the Asian American community. Many student interns took matters into their own hands to ensure the longevity and future of the AAC. According to a 2018 Tufts Observer article, AAC interns took the initiative to launch fundraisers that would help the
16 TUFTS OBSERVER NOVEMBER 21, 2022
By Billy Zeng and Rohith Raman
AAC grow to its full potential. “[The administration] almost took away the AAC and the DSDI Centers, and the Mural Room [at the AAC] is to commemorate that and say this is our space,” said junior Nacie Loh, a member of the Tufts Asian Student Coalition (TASC). Prior to the establishment of the Asian American Center, there was a robust Asian American community that created affinity spaces on their own. Voices, a literary and visual arts magazine, serves as a space for the Asian diaspora to have a sense of identity and belongingness. A group of Asianidentifying students that eventually formed TASC spearheaded this initiative according to a 1976 Observer article titled Asian Lit Magazine. TASC’s current mission is “to educate and mobilize toward progressive social change, [and aspire] to foster a safe space within which the Tufts community can learn and discuss Asian American issues.” Similar to TASC’s Voices, the
Tufts Association of South Asians (TASA) produced a South Asian literary and arts magazine titled S.A.L.A.A.M in the early 2000s. Around the same time, student activists formed the South Asian Political Action Committee (SAPAC) to advocate for a Hindi/Urdu language program and a South Asian center separate from the AAC. Three years ago, when inaugural AAC Director Linell Yugawa retired, the Tufts administration initially had no intention of filling her position. This decision sparked frustration across the Tufts student body. On March 21, 2019, a group of concerned Asian and Asian American students wrote in a Tufts Daily op-ed, “[The Asian American community] cannot let the university define [their] realities and possibilities.” Students from the Asian American community then took the initiative to open a dialogue with the administration to meet their demands for institutional resources and support. After this student mobilization, the Tufts Administration sent out a university-wide email announcing Aaron Parayno had been named the new director of the Asian American Center—six months after the release of the op-ed. In recent years, Asian student activism has shifted toward advocating for intellectual resources to study Asian America. With Tufts’ addition of the Race, Colonialism, & Diaspora (RCD) Studies Department in 2018, Asian American student organizers have shifted their energies to advocating for institutional investments and support for ethnic studies scholars as well as the growing ethnic studies community as students can declare majors and minors in various RCD tracks. Academic discourse can provide another avenue for like-minded individuals with shared experiences to come together and think about their identities critically. Junior Anneke Chan, a member of TASC,