D.E.E.P. Impact hosts dialogue on Asian American hate, income inequality, xenophobia after the pandemic, TikTok congressional hearing

By JAKE DODOHARA The Breeze

Students were given sticky notes as they walked in the Union Ballroom to attend Diversity Education Empowerment Program Impact’s program titled, “Busting Myths and Speaking Truth: Exploring the APIDA Community.”

As they gathered in the ballroom, they were encouraged to place their sticky note on a line scale, ranking how much they knew about the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) community and the struggles it currently faces. Students were then directed to sit at a round table with each one already occupied by a D.E.E.P.-affiliated student “diversity educator.”

D.E.E.P. Impact is an organization sponsored by JMU’s Center for Multicultural Student Services (CMSS). According to its website, the organization creates programming for the JMU community that “promotes inclusion, fosters advocacy, and encourages respect for and across differences.”

D.E.E.P.’s events differ from the traditional lecture format that JMU students may be accustomed to, where a single speaker relays their ideas or a PowerPoint to a crowded audience. Instead, the program uses a peer-to-peer methodology to communicate its ideas, while multiple student diversity educators help execute their events.

These students are trained through a human resources and development course dedicated to facilitating conversations pertaining to diversity, equity and inclusion. The student educators then conduct events called “diversity dialogues,” where they divide their audience into small groups and intimately speak with students about their perspectives on the topic at hand.

The April 19 program began with two student diversity educators, junior marketing major Caitlin McGeehan and junior music major Liliya Petrosyan, who gave a brief PowerPoint presentation. Participants were encouraged to make a “community pact” during the event to “create a space for honest and authentic dialogue” and challenge themselves to explore multiple perspectives, according to the PowerPoint.

McGeehan and Petrosyan described the history of APIDA Heritage Month and related what countries and ethnic groups fall under the APIDA umbrella. They also covered the various challenges faced by the ADIPA community.

Topics like the effects of COVID-19-based APIDA discrimination, income inequality in the APIDA community and supposed xenophobic undertones during the TikTok congressional hearing when congress members mispronounced TikTok CEO Shou Chew’s name.

The presentation then broke into small groups, where student diversity educators asked their respective tables of students questions like, “How does limiting access to loans and other small business support hurt the APIDA community?” and, “What are the ramifications of associating a virus with a group of people?”

While there are right or wrong answers to these questions, they’re designed to spark a critical analysis of the event’s subject matter.

“If it was just a lecture, I think that it’d honestly be kind of boring,” junior psychology major Charlotte Terrill said about D.E.E.P.’s unique formatting, adding that the peer-topeer education style allows for an “open flow of ideas” and questions without the participants being intimated in front of a large audience.

Terrill joined D.E.E.P. Impact her freshman year at JMU, when classes and extracurriculars were online. Although

Terrill came out in high school — she identifies as asexual and panromantic — she claims she was never “super involved” in the queer community. Joining D.E.E.P. Impact allowed her to connect with people who had “similar values and identities” on campus, she said, while also educating about those specific values and identities.

Through D.E.E.P. impact, the student diversity educators are able to personalize the material they share with their student audience.

Terrill recalled a moment where she was educating a class about the asexual identity and someone raised their hand and asked, “If you’re not having sex in a relationship, what do you do?” As an asexual person herself who’d been in multiple relationships that “don’t involve sex,” Terrill found the question funny, and now makes sure to list non-sexual things that people in a relationship could do when educating.

“Nobody that I’ve ever encountered has ever come at it with a negative standpoint,” Terrill said. “They’re just at different points of knowledge.”

Chrissy Donaldson, a human resources development graduate assistant joined D.E.E.P. Impact as a volunteer her sophomore year of undergrad with the organization being an outsource for community and advocacy. As she worked on her master’s degree, she’s become a graduate assistant of the program and noticed more structures being created at JMU to increase diversity on campus.

“We’ve grown into that core umbrella and have been able to build a foundation as the DEI team of JMU,” Donaldson said about the Office of Disability Services (ODS), CMSS, and Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE). She also noted an increase of student involvement and passion for DEI activities during her time at JMU.

Sam Brunner, a junior English major and student diversity educator, said they joined the program as an outlet for the frustration they faced while being looked at and treated differently.

After exploring their sexual and gender identity while quarantined in 2020, Brunner began to dress outside of the gender binary norms — choosing to wear skirts and bandanas — and now identifies as non-binary. Coming into Harrisonburg, Brunner said they and their gender non-conforming friends faced “hostility on campus” and in town, with strangers yelling at them, laughing, pointing and doing double takes. Brunner even described a moment where a friend of theirs had a beer can thrown at them while dressed in drag on Halloween.

“That’s why I value spaces like Lavender Lounge so much and the diversity lounges,” Brunner said, giving a shoutout to other CMSS-sponsored resources on campus. “When you step in there … nobody’s going to look at you twice, nobody’s going to treat you weird because a lot of