Legacy of activism: Asian American Studies courses offered Fall 2020

Top, wall art from a 2006 Critical Ethnic Studies Coalition demonstration. Bottom, a showcase of the student-run Asian American Studies class Fugitivity in the Academy from December, 2019. Courtesy of VASAM Working Group.

Nicole Kormendi and Sylvia Peng Guest Columnists

Do my eyes deceive me? I look again. In the weird Ask Banner font that makes everything look like a screenplay reads “AMST/ASIA 185 Intro to Asian American Studies.” My first instinct is to call Nicole. “Yoooo,” I tell her, “they are offering an intro class for ASAM.” Sitting by the desk in my home on Long Island, I begin to tear up a bit. I feel silly, but so happy.

Laying on the bed of my Fort Lee home, I get off FaceTime with Syl and my chest swells. I’ll be done with college in two weeks. Pre-registration is now a part of my past, but still I click through the course catalog to the AMST/ASIA 185 class. I already know about the offering—Sylvia and I had read over the postdoc job listing, skimmed through candidate CVs and attended interview luncheons—but still, part of me expected it to fall through. Maybe I’ve grown accustomed to Vassar disappointing us. Seeing “Asian American Studies” plastered across an official Vassar site led to feelings I’m unaccustomed to: I hold them close, prod at them gently.

When we were first-years, neither one of us knew Asian American (ASAM) studies existed. We saw no courses offered on the subject at Vassar. It hadn’t even crossed our minds that our histories as Asian Americans were worthy of academic study. When VASAM—the Vassar Asian American Studies Working Group—was first established in November of 2017 by students from the Asian Students’ Alliance executive board and the two of us, we based our advocacy upon seeing ourselves represented in our courses and one of our professor’s convictions that the ASAM studies was worth fighting for. In the months to come, we combed through Vassar’s archives, met with professors and spoke with alums who had previously pushed for ASAM studies. All of this information foretold the many obstacles to be encountered.

Through this process, we became absorbed in a history that lay beyond anything we could’ve imagined at the onset. Stories of student activism, collective voice, institutional disregard and broken promises surfaced all around us. We learned that Asian American studies (or more broadly, Critical Ethnic Studies) had its roots in the late-1960s Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) movement, See VASAM on page 7

Fiona Apple’s surprise album holds up to hypeProfessors’

[TW: This article mentions assault and rape.] Y ou’ve probably heard the buzz about Fiona Apple’s “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” by now. Since its unexpected release on Friday, April 17, the record has garnered unprecedented critical acclaim. It holds a weighted average score of 100 out of 100 on review aggregator website Metacritic, making it the highest rated non-retrospective album in the website’s history; it also received a perfect score from Pitchfork, the first in nearly 10 years. Critics and general audiences alike have already deemed the album the definitive musical statement of the COVID-19 pandemic, of the #MeToo era and of Apple’s career.

Apple hasn’t attracted this much attention in decades. Since 1996, when she achieved household name status at age 18 thanks to her Grammy-winning album “Tidal,” she has experienced a gradual decline in mainstream popularity—partly because of her controversially candid interviews and infamously abrasive acceptance speeches, but also due to her ever-expanding sonic experimentation. Yet the artist’s unwillingness or, rather, inability to conform to the music industry’s constantly shifting expectations of women transformed her career path from that of a burgeoning pop star into that of a revered cult figure. Her meticulous artistic process has produced a slight yet magnificent output of records, each subversive, harrowing and unique. To many, “Fetch the Bolt [TW: This article describes illness of a family member and discusses death.] W ith some homework, it’s easy enough: Just hand it in. Use your compulsory—no, compulsive—daily survey of the news to help you write your papers. Learn from a Cuomo powerpoint that the chances of your sister dying while working in a medical intensive care unit is greatly increased because it is now part of a COVID-19-only hospital, as desigated by the State.

Use your big heart to research the worst cases before realizing there’s little you can do to help. Rally the neighborhood to drop extra personal protective equipment at your doorstep, but watch her get sick anyway.

Use your anxiety to wash your hands. Use your misery to watch your neighbors forego social distancing. For more than a week, listen to your sister’s cough when you fall asleep. Listen to her coughing when you wake up. Try to leave trays outside of her door, but realize all too quickly that she’s too weak to get out of bed. Masks and gloves for all of us, then, as we feed her.

Use your naive expectations of what college would be like to cry. Cry over the relatively inconsequential stuff, mostly because it’s easier to worry about. Cry for the seniors completing their theses without a library, without a graduation. Cry for the juniors without a JYA. Cry for the sophomores who left campus just as they declared their majors. Cry for the April 27: How to use your lungs O n Monday, April 20, student group Nobody Fails Vassar College (NFVC) launched a round of strikes on classes and other online gathering spaces. NFVC’s main mission is to persuade Vassar’s administration to institute either a Universal Pass (UP) or Double A (A/A-) system for the Spring 2020 semester to better accommodate students who have been most disadvantaged by the ongoing global pandemic.

Currently, the College has adopted a Universal NRO policy for the semester that allows students to choose between their desired minimum letter grade and a PA (pass) grade. Any student may withdraw from a course at any point, up to and including the day after the conclusion of final exams. Additionally, under this grading scheme, faculty can adjust their individual grading practices as they see fit.

The administration states that the current Universal NRO policy will guarantee that no students fail and ensure that there are no forced withdrawals or opt-in incompletes. However, perspectives on student strike See STRIKE on page 6 See Fiona Apple on page 6 Abby Tarwater Guest Columnist See How To on page 7 Allison Deutsch Guest Columnist Ciara Murray-Jordan/The Miscellany News. Annabelle Wang Guest Reporter