Amplifying AAPI Voices - Special Issue 2022

FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022

AMPLIFYING AAPI VOICES // RACHEL FOLMAR

WHERE DO ASIANS FIT IN THE NEWSROOM? // BY SOPHIE WANG

“As an East Asian, you’re one of the least oppressed people in the world.”

This was one of many hate comments I received as a high schooler from readers responding to an article I wrote in 2020 about the cultural appropriation of the fox-eye trend. I had noticed a lack of Asian news stories in the general media and wondered why writing one might have caused this kind of reaction. Having been told that I am un-oppressed, I reflected on the role Asian Americans have in journalism at the Yale Daily News.

For a while, I didn’t realize how impactful my identity as an Asian American was in shaping my journalism until I found myself in a space that intentionally centered it. When I attended the first AAPI affinity group meeting in February, I felt grateful for the conversations around inclusion in the newsroom and related to other Asian journalists’ triumphs and struggles. I appreciated that there was a community within the News who cared about my racial identity and experiences. For this article, I decided to have more in-depth conversations with some of those people about the role that Asians have in the YDN newsroom.

According to the News’ most recent demographic survey results conducted in the fall of 2021 — which 100 of about 300 staff members filled out — Asians accounted for 36 percent of total staff, down slightly from 37.3 the previous year.

In the 2019-2020 school year, 20.8 percent of all Yale students identified as Asian. Nationally, across newsrooms in 2021, 7.7 percent of staffers were Asian journalists.

At the News, Asian students also are more likely to have roles outside of the newsroom. The most recent demographic survey results indicated that Asians accounted for 44 percent of non-newsroom staff, a category that includes photo, video, data, podcast and illustrations; production jobs which include copy editing and production and design; and long-

term project work which include business, tech and human resources.

However, for written content — reporting and opinion — Asians made up around 31% of newsroom staff. Currently, there aren’t any staff members who identify as Pacific Islanders.

Asian reporters are here to share their community’s stories and also to improve inclusion in stories that have traditionally not showcased their voices. Compared to national newsrooms, the News and other college newspapers such as The Crimson have a high concentration of Asian Americans on staff, giving us a unique opportunity to reflect on our roles as journalists.

I spoke to Brian Zhang ’25, who said that his Asian American identity has made him “more conscious” of the stories he writes. He noted that he has an interest in centralizing his work around Asian American Pacific Islander, or AAPI, achievements and challenges. Although he has not faced “many challenges” as an Asian American writer, he believes that there can be more Asian American representation in the media industry.

Staff photographer Tenzin Jordan ’25 said that having come from an immigrant background, he was taught important family values which included “be[ing] aware of your surroundings” and “know[ing] when to speak up [and] when to listen.” He’s also applied these key lessons in his photography. “[Photography] is a weird intersection between an art form, but also a form of recording and reporting,” said Jordan. “There’s an obvious gap between my experiences and the experiences of the older generation … like people who are my grandparents … so being able to stop, listen and evaluate the stories around you and then convey that in a medium is very important.”

One of the reasons behind my decision to write for the Sci-Tech desk was the editors, Anjali Mangla ’24 and Nicole Rodriguez ’24. As women of color, they understand

the importance of comprehensive reporting and encourage me to cover a diverse range of topics and to source multiple perspectives.

Mangla has started various initiatives to increase diversity coverage at the News. As a reporter last year, she created her own beat called science and social justice because she wanted to address “what it’s like to be in science and have a different identity” and to investigate how race and health intersect.

She also noted that she has had to advocate for greater South Asian representation in coverage and in sourcing. According to Mangla, most of the Asian coverage had involved events that focused on East Asian identities.

“I feel like just being a woman of color in general, I try to source pitches or general assignments and encourage reporters to cover stories about marginalized communities who normally don’t have a voice,” Mangla said. “I think with my Asian identity and just being a South Asian woman at Yale, I feel so much more cognizant of it than I do normally … That informs what I pitch and how I want the desk to write.”

Together with Isaac Yu ’24, Mangla created the News’ AAPI affinity group to connect people of similar identities. They hoped that members could share resources and information, along with “being there for each other” because of a shared sense of background.

Yu noted that very few publications have the access and resources that the News has in regard to Asian voices, so it is important to “platform those voices.” For him, “representation is not the endgame.”

“We need to make sure the space not only represents Asian people on campus but includes them and values their work and cherishes them,” said Yu. Yu mentioned that he took an active interest in Asian and Asian American politics in his journalism, which is one way he has tried to bring his identity to his work. In addition, he noted that being able to speak in

Chinese and having the experience of being an Asian American in the States has “made it more effective” for him to report on people in his community and to ensure that topics that might not be covered are reported on.

Having Asian Americans in leadership positions, within the News and at Yale, has played an instrumental role in inspiring journalists.

In this paper’s 144 year history, there have been only two Asian editorsin-chief: Vivian Yee ’11 and Sammy Westfall ’21. There have been a number of Asian managing editors — including current editors Ryan Chiao ’23 and Natalie Kainz ’23 — that identified as Asian, as well as more than ten Asian publishers.

Sarah Feng ’25 described that “a certain level of Asian American leadership has been encouraging,” as she discussed Yu’s presence at the YDN and the friendships she’s formed from writing for the Yale Daily News Magazine. Hamera Shabbir ’24, a reporter on the sports desk, noted that she appreciates writing about sports in a time when Victoria M. Chun, the first Asian American to serve as the Thomas A. Beckett Director of Athletics, serves in leadership along with other “diverse and representative members of athletics.” Chun’s leadership reassures Shabbir that “the school, the sports, and the people participating in them are continuously striving for equality and for diversity.”

Shabbir explained that although some sports have historically catered towards white audiences, her experience with writing for the sports desk has been very “positive” because there is a big community within sports and the News has “extremely supportive people” who never made her “feel singled out for her identity.”

Feng mentioned that conducting interviews with Asian American subjects sometimes becomes more of a conversation because they share experiences she can empathize with, and these interviews are some of the “most effective and the most enlightening” ones for her. She

recalled interviewing someone who described having to “straddle the line between being too meek and too aggressive,” which she related to and enjoyed “explor[ing] the interview .. and deepen[ing] it.”

As a staff reporter for the city desk, Zhang noted that New Haven’s Asian population is low compared to Yale’s, making up just 5.6 percent of the city’s population. According to Zhang, these residents may struggle with finding a news source they can read that represents their own stories, so having a news outlet that covers stories relevant to their cultures and perspectives is “important.”

“I think especially the Asian American experience is one that doesn’t receive a ton of coverage, and only recently, people are starting to feel more comfortable speaking out about it,” said Feng. “I feel lucky to be at a publication in the school that encourages that sort of coverage.”

Yet, reporters at the News still feel that more can be done about increasing diversity and inclusion.

Feng described the affinity groups as “comforting” since she knows that they are there if she “ever need[s] a support system.” But beyond being “a support network,” she does not feel that the News has so far “really cultivated that into a full community.” She noted that having the AAPI affinity group host more talks, readings, AAPI speakers in journalism and workshops for covering Asian American topics could help.

Shabbir recalled having to advocate for a reporter to cover a show that the South Asian Society, or SAS, hosted, which sold out tickets within 12 hours. She recognized that she had started pushing for SAS coverage because of her role as the SAS communications chair, but the fact she even had to do so in the first place was “just a bit confusing.” According to her, the institution claims to be “dedicated towards student life and student coverage,” but needs to “expand on its definition of student life to incorporate … groups and events that are significant to students.”

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPECIAL ISSUE AMPLIFYING

AAPI VOICES

CT to pass first in nation AAPI studies legislation // BY YASH ROY This year, Connecticut is set to become the first state in the nation to begin the process of including AAPI education in the state’s educational curriculum in their K-12 system with dedicated funding and stakeholder input toward achieving this goal.

Connecticut has been a forerunner in including BIPOC voices in its curriculum. In late 2020, Connecticut required all public high schools across the state to offer an Latinx and African American history elective starting during the 2022-23 school year. In 2021, AAPI history was added into K-8 history curriculum through HB 6619. Now, thanks to the work of Make Us Visible CT and other AAPI advocacy groups, HB 5282, a bill that would add AAPI history to state education statutes, has passed through the state legislature’s Education and Appropriations Committee. The bill has 89 cosponsors from both major political parties and is expected to soon impact classrooms statewide.

“You get a sprinkle about internment or the presence of Chinese workers in the early and mid 1800s,” said Quan Tran, Senior Lecturer in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale and intern coordinator for Make Us Visible CT. “What we’re trying to do is expand the conversation on the civic engagement and contributions of Asian Americans, the relationship between Asian Americans and other social groups in the history of the United States and the important roles that Asian Americans play in the history of this country.”

According to Jeffrey Gu, members of Make Us Visible CT and other AAPI advocacy groups came together to create HB 5282 with the support of members of the state legislature, including house education chair Bobby Sanchez. Gu said that the partnership began following a string of anti-AAPI hate crimes in Connecticut, including an insistence where a man in Milford was told to “go back to China.”

As a result of this experience and other cases of race-based hatred, Make Us Visible CT looked toward what they viewed as the root cause of this hatred: education.

According to Tran, Make Us Visible CT views education as the crux of combating anti-Asian hate since the organization believes that exposing children from a young age on AAPI history will help decrease discrimination and racially motivated attacks agaiinst the group.

HB 5282 came before the General Assembly’s Education Committee in mid-February. On Feb. 28, members of the Connecticut community, including Yale students and alumnae, came before the committee to testify in favor of the bill.

“As an Asian American, I did not learn about my family and community’s history growing up,” said co-founder of aapiNHV Jennifer Heikkila Diaz ’00. “The students and families with whom I had the privilege of working will tell you that working to make our learning experiences more culturally sustaining specifically for Asian American Pacific Islander-identifying students

and families, or all of the above mattered and still matter to them and have shaped who they are and how they see the world in powerful and positive ways.”

Besides lip service to the AAPI community, the bill includes a commitment from the state to fund the creation of curriculums that include AAPI history, tradition and cultures. The amount committed is unspecified. This measure was voted out of the state’s appropriations committee unanimously, and the larger bill was voted out of the Education Committee with a joint favorable mark on March 7. According to Gu, the funding for this initiative will be $100,000.

This past Monday, the bill was placed on the state legislature’s calendar. According to Gu, Make Us Visible CT has been in contact with the offices of House Majority Leader Jason Rojas as well as Speaker of the House Matt Ritter and all parties are hopeful that the bill will be brought before the house for a full vote.

According to Gu, the bill has wide bipartisan support and the group is not worried about serious opposition to the bill.

In anticipation of its passage, AAPI advocates are preparing to help realize the bill’s promise of meaningfully including the community’s history in school curricula.

According to Tran, Make Us Visible CT has taken a three pronged approach to realize this goal with the bill’s passage being just the first prong. The next step

is helping create the curriculum for students in K-12.

“We’re really dedicated to creating a localized curriculum because Asian American history is very west coast based,” said Kate Lee, Make Us Visible CT organizer and Fairfield County middle school teacher.

“We are hoping to find and uplift the Asian American histories in all pockets of Connecticut … so we’ve been engaging a lot in a lot of conversations with community leaders and members in talking about their experiences and family history within the state of Connecticut.”

According to Lee, the group hopes to create a curriculum for students of all ages. Under one proposal, younger students would be exposed to Asian and Pacific Islander holidays, foods and traditions. The group is also hoping to increase representation of AAPI peoples in picture books and other educational devices.

Lee said that under that proposal, as students get older, they will be exposed to more “nuanced narratives” on AAPI peoples in the nation and how they have been historically marginalized as well as their interactions with other people in the United States.

Make Us Visible was founded in Connecticut in March 2021 and has now expanded to eight states across the nation.

Contact YASH ROY at yash.roy@yale.edu

South Asian Yalies speak on identity, belonging // BY ANIKA SETH South Asian Yalies reflected on the challenges of finding a cultural home away from home — but some said that no campus space has felt quite right for them.

Since it opened in 1981, the Asian American Cultural Center has been an important space for many students to interact with other Asian and Asian American students through events and programming. Operating in collaboration with the AACC as an affiliate organization, Yale’s South Asian Society offers a space for students of South Asian backgrounds to engage with one another and to share South Asian culture with the Yale community more broadly through various events and showcases.

For some South Asian students, SAS offers a sense of home that the AACC does not, particularly as the term “Asian” within United States contexts is often defaulted as East Asian. But at the same time, students told the News that SAS is not free of fault, noting the implicit ways in which they feel the organization centers on a certain kind of South Asian identity and falls short of including Yalies of all nationalities and religions.

“My experience with SAS has been very eye-opening because for me, it felt like home and was integral in supporting an important part of my identity,” a student from India, who requested to remain anonymous for this article to avoid backlash, wrote to the News.

“However, for a lot of my friends, it was not received as the same sort of safe space,” the same student added. “SAS tends to feel very centered on north India and very rarely makes an effort to actively promote culture from other countries.”

Nonetheless, for some, the organization offers an important community — especially relative to the AACC. “SAS has been an important part of my Yale experience, and having a strong South Asian community made it much easier for me to feel at home here,” another international student, who is also from India, wrote in an email to the News.

“Things like cultural performances, town halls about South Asian topics, and even just parties with Bollywood music have helped me maintain my connection to my South Asian identity.”

This student, who serves on the board of SAS, also asked to remain anonymous.

South Asian Society: filling in where the Asian American Cultural Center does not The United States Census Bureau defines a person of the Asian race as “having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.”

But as a 2020 Time article explored, the connotations of the term “Asian” in the United States go deeper than the census. The label is often perceived as centering on or only including East Asian identities — in 2016, College Board adjusted its race categories to explicitly include those of the“Indian subcontinent and Philippines origin” under the Asian category after discourse swirled on a college admissions forum as to whether Indians count as Asian.

This trend also emerges in national politics, and the 2020 Democratic presidential primary was no exception. Andrew Yang, a Taiwanese American candidate, was often slated as “the Asian candidate,” the Time article reads, ignor-

WKND HOT TAKE get hit by the yuttle for tuition

ing to some extent the South Asian and Southeast Asian heritages of competitors Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard.

Yang himself spoke on the subject: “My Asianness is kind of obvious in a way that might not be true of Kamala or even Tulsi,” Yang said. “That’s not a choice. It’s just a fairly evident reality.”

This conflation of “Asian” with “East Asian” within the United States leaves students involved with SAS feeling varying levels of exclusion from the AACC. “While the AACC has made strides in including South Asians within the AACC’s space, I think there is always progress to be made on further including a group of Asians in the AACC who have historically felt like their identities and values have not been fully appreciated or emulated by the AACC,” a student involved with SAS, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid social repercussions, wrote to the News.

The anonymous board member concurred, similarly noting that the AACC — and Assistant AACC Director Sheraz Iqbal, in particular — works hard to promote the inclusion of South Asians, but that this task is complicated by the breadth of the term “Asian.”

Joliana Yee, director of the AACC, commented on the efforts by the AACC to include South Asians.

“The AACC has made deliberate efforts to challenge the misperception of who is included under these umbrella terms through our advocacy, communications, events, and initiatives,” Yee wrote to the News. “From ensuring South Asian representation on our AACC student staff, invited guest speakers, and artists, to supporting local South Asian restaurants and providing advising and funding for our affiliated South Asian student organizations, the AACC is committed to creating ongoing opportunities for South Asian and South Asian American students (undergraduate, graduate, and professional) to build community and feel a sense of belonging at Yale.”

The SAS board member further noted that the AACC is dedicated specifically to Asian American students, which might not cater entirely to the experience of international students who do not identify as American.

While organizations like the Office of International Students and Scholars and the International Students Organization exist to support international students, for some, SAS specifically provides a culturally supportive environment to American and international South Asian students alike.

“While the AACC is a very homely space, I do sometimes struggle to feel connected to it,” the board member wrote.

“Not being American and having grown up in a place where a majority of the population is Asian makes my experiences feel different from those of Asian Americans.

In addition, Asia is such a large continent encompassing so many different cultures, that it becomes difficult for the ‘Asian’ identity to feel universal.

“However, the AACC does do their best to support South Asians who may feel less included, and people like Sheraz put in a lot of effort to make this better,” the board member added.

Shortcomings and future steps within the South Asian Society Four South Asian students who talked to the News expressed gratitude for the South Asian Society’s role in filling these gaps in belonging.

Two of those four, in addition to five others, said they believe further change is necessary.

The first student noted that the organization carries an implicit feeling of centering Hindu and north Indian identities, reflecting long-standing issues in the subcontinent of prioritizing the safety and security of north Indian — and often lighter-skinned — Hindus. Three additional members of Yale’s South Asian community, who are not Hindu, told the News they felt “uncomfortable” or “unwelcome” in the organization due to religious ostracization.

One potential reason for this may be SAS’s commitment to secularity — or the selective enforcement thereof. Per AACC regulations, SAS is not permitted to host religious events, but one Yale senior said that some cultural events — such as Diwali — are imbricated so heavily with religious undertones that it is nearly impossible to fully secularize their communal importance. The senior said that historically, some students have felt the organization “picks and chooses” which events are and are not secularized causing it to disproportionately disregard non-Hindu holidays.

“For [SAS’s] intention to remain completely secular, it should either completely rid itself of any affiliation with some religious groups or make the effort to integrate all in their designs, aesthetic and learnings,” another student said.

Over the past year, SAS has not held any religiously affiliated events.

Two other South Asian students echoed the sentiment of implicit Indian dominance in conversations with the News. Specific examples that interviewees described included playing predominantly Hindi-language songs at various social events, as opposed to reflecting the musical diversity of the Indian subcontinent, as well as participants and performers dressing mostly in north Indian clothing at SAS-hosted cultural showcases.

For some, religious exclusion also arises from such showcases, as cultural performances also often carry religious themes. As such, one student said unequal performer representation at SAS-hosted showcases can further feelings of isolation.

In a text to the News, outgoing SAS presidents Vanya Shivashankar and Sandhya Kumar

acknowledged that SAS has not always felt wholly inclusive, and they discussed efforts taken over the past year to push for progress.

“The South Asian Society recognizes that there are gaps in the groups of South Asian people that have been represented in our organization since its creation,” Kumar and Shivashankar wrote in a statement to the News.

“A goal this year was to better listen and work with South Asian communities and identities that have been traditionally marginalized to make SAS a more welcoming space on Yale’s campus, and we’ve engaged in these discussions in meetings and community events. In coming years, we hope to continue prioritizing this goal and make significant progress in increasing representation of traditionally marginalized South Asian groups on our board and in our organization.”

Kumar added that over the past year, SAS has organized town halls to discuss important issues that face the diaspora, such as the model minority myth and religious polarization in South Asia, and is currently planning a teach-in event about the ongoing socioeconomic crisis in Sri Lanka. She also noted a recent South Asian fashion show, which highlighted styles from various areas of the subcontinent, and said that the SAS-hosted spring cultural showcase, Dhamaal, “incorporated talents from across South Asia.” Kumar further detailed specific efforts to appeal to a wider South Asian audience at Yale by tying in popular media and culture.

Looking toward the year ahead, incoming presidents Kirin Mueller and Anushka Nijhawan also said they are prioritizing the creation of a more inclusive SAS. “We recognize that in the past, South Asian Society has not been a place where all South Asians at Yale have had adequate representation,” Mueller wrote in a statement. “Over the past year, one of our primary goals was working with South Asian students from all ethnic, socioeconomic, religious, and national backgrounds to include more South Asian voices in our organization. As I and my co-President Anushka Nijhawan enter our year as leaders of the South Asian Society, our number one priority is to make SAS a place where students of all South Asian identities can feel welcomed and at home.”

The AACC is located at 295 Church St. Contact ANIKA SETH at anika.seth@yale.edu

//JACK LI

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPECIAL ISSUE AMPLIFYING

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AAPI VOICES

COLLOQUIUM: Senior theses on Asian American issues // BY CLAIRE LEE

Cathy Duong ’22 Duong is an English major, and their thesis is titled “Literary Parentage in Vietnamese American Literature about Paris.”

“The question that I was asking that led me to these books is: Where is French colonization in Paris in Vietnamese history?

People mostly think about Vietnamese history and experience as related to the Vietnam War so I was curious about accessing a deeper past that Vietnamese Americans are still affected by.”

Sunnie Liu ’22 Liu is a history and art doubble major, and their history thesis is titled “Rocking the Boat: Vietnamese American Resistance to Racialized Violence Across the Gulf Coast.”

“My history thesis is studying Vietnamese refugee fishermen and their families and communities across the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida, and the ways in which they experience racialized anti-Communist violence from the local white townspeople and other white fish-

Abeyaz Amir ’22 Amir is an art major, and their thesis is titled “Undefeated.”

“My work is about all of the observations that I made throughout college and being a young adult and also studying history at Yale. The project is also about colonialism because who gets to go out at night and dance and sing with their friends and drink and do drugs? That answer is largely dictated by the outcome of history and colonialism.”

Jieun Yu ’22 Yu is an art major, and their thesis is titled “Dokkebi.”

“This thesis was about ... what I felt and experienced and project as a genderqueer and queer Korean person.

And what it means to have body and life and also death in a postcolonial world.

I think it mostly deals with identity or like body dysmorphia or any sort of dysmorphia that comes with being objectified as queers.”

Going to the doctor when you’re Asian in America // BY KAYLA YUP Peggy Wong NUR ’24 watched a mother and father weep at opposite sides of the patient room, separately mourning their child’s rapidly declining condition.

Their child was the first Asian patient Wong saw during this clinical round. The patient’s blood count and blood pressure were low — it became clear that they were very ill and quickly declining. When the rapid response team crowded the room, Wong saw the mother and father’s distress spike. Yet, they were isolated in their sorrow, crying at opposing ends of the room.

“As an Asian American, I completely understand,” Wong said. “I thought they should be consoling each other, holding each other and crying together. But at the same time, I think it’s because culturally, they’re just not used to that kind of affection.

It made me really sad to see them crying by themselves in separate corners

when they’re married. But it’s hard to navigate this because even though I’m Asian and they’re Asian, I felt like I couldn’t communicate with them — I couldn’t just tell them ‘I get it.’”

Wong said that many Asian American and Pacific Islander health care providers grapple with the uncertain role of cultural competency in health care — it is largely unknown how to communicate understanding when it comes to situations specifically influenced by cultural norms. Wong described the cultural training that would guide this approach as being largely absent in nursing education, and only learned either “on the job” or through one’s lived experiences.

In this case, consoling the parents would deserve more time than a few quick minutes, Wong said. There were emotional barriers she recognized coming from the same culture.

The process of figuring out how best to apply a cultural lens to the health

care setting will require more cases of “learning on the job.” But when caring for AAPI communities, the first barrier to treatment is actually getting the patient to the doctor’s office.

“AAPI folks tend to have really low service utilization,” assistant professor of psychiatry and Yale CHATogether founder Eunice Yuen said.

“Meaning they don’t get help until they’re severely sick, and then show up in the emergency room and need to be hospitalized. And it is not uncommon to hear an AAPI teen or young adult having depression and suicidal thinking for three to four years, and their parents having no idea until it’s really severe.”

According to Nikita Paudel ’25, in Nepal, medicine is usually seen as something “you succumb to” rather than as a tool to help. Paudel was born and raised in Nepal before immigrating to America with her family. In lieu of “giving up” by choosing medi-

cation, her family valued “fighting through” the pain. She noted that this affected women to a greater extent in her culture, with access to health care for women being “a little bit disenfranchised” because of gender bias.

Women are commonly expected to fight pain off on their own more often, Paudel said.

Paudel also noted the cultural fear of hypermedicalization, a perceived trend in American medicine that was “the complete opposite” of medicalization attitudes in Nepal. This, compounded with hesitancy towards substances that they “don’t understand fully coming to a whole different culture,” could influence the low service utilization rates when in America, she said. Paudel additionally questioned where the line was between respecting traditional cultural beliefs and prac-

tices — such as home remedies and “spiritual” approaches to healing sickness in her family — and also ensuring that families receive adequate medical care and attention.

“Some people feel like they need a culturally-oriented doctor or therapist or psychiatrist to understand the cultural perspective [of cases],” Yuen said. “If the provider has a similar cultural background, they feel like they will have a similar human connection and will be more easily understood. This is a well known factor for why many people under-utilize [health care] services — they cannot find a provider that shares their cultural background.”

Read in full online on the Yale Daily News website.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu .

Three graduating Asian American athletes reflect // BY HAMERA SHABBIR This academic year, graduating Asian American athletes have competed at the highest levels.

Despite facing the stresses of academics and athletics in combination with the uncertainties of the pandemic, several Asian American Bulldogs are closing out their athletic careers with notable successes. Cody Lin ’22, the sole senior in men’s tennis, discussed the trajectory of his athletic career while women’s tennis players Jessie Gong ’22 and Kathy Wang ’22 spoke on the significance of a supportive team atmosphere in trying times.

“Over the pandemic, there was sort of a rise of Asian American hate crimes and our team has a lot of AAPI representation,” Wang said. “It was really a great space to talk about how we were feeling, stresses we were under, and share our emotions and have a very receptive audience [of] people who understood what we were going through.”

Cody Lin Lin matriculated in 2017 but was unable to play due to an injury and received the men’s tennis Stuart D. Ludlum Jr. ’62 Memorial Award for “enthusiasm, perseverance and team

spirit” as a first-year with teammate Nathan Brown ’19. Through physical therapy and team support, Lin returned to play during the 201819 season and won nine matches in singles competition. As a junior, Lin stood out among the team with a 14–6 record and was awarded the George A. Phelps Memorial Award for being the most improved player.

Lin emphasized the presence of Asian American athletes on campus.

He said that despite the lack of a formal community, he found the success of other Asian American athletes with similar backgrounds inspiring.

“It really hasn’t felt like I’ve been in the minority,” Lin said. “Even though tennis historically has not been the most diverse sport due to both its nature as a ‘country club sport’ and the high costs associated with equipment, facilities, etc. I think it’s been moving in the right direction for a while now in terms of diversity, especially for Asian Americans like myself.”

Jessie Gong Gong matriculated in the fall of 2018 and began her first season with 18 wins in both singles and doubles. She was named Ivy League Sec-

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// SOPHIE HENRY

ond Team in doubles with Samantha Martinelli ’21 and ITA Scholar-Athlete for that competitive season.

During her sophomore year, Martinelli and Gong made history by becoming the first Bulldogs to be named All-American in tennis and by becoming the first Ivy League women to win the ITA All-American title.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, her sophomore year of play was cut short and the Ivy League did not participate in competition during her junior year. Gong describes the squad’s AAPI representation as meaningful during times when AAPI hate was increasing during the pan-

demic. She also noted “emails of support” from the Asian American Cultural Center and events between the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and the cultural house as “efforts from the institution” to develop a community amongst Asian athletes.

“It’s also nice that our coaches give us space to discuss that,” Gong said.

“Our coaches are not AAPI so it’s just seeing people in our close group to make an effort to also understand or educate themselves is helpful.”

Kathy Wang Wang also matriculated during the fall of 2018. She began her first season by earning 16 wins in both singles

and doubles, along with ITA Scholar-Athlete. As a sophomore, Wang earned 10 wins in singles before the competition was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wang is a member of Yale Bulldogs for Change, a group dedicated to improving the varsity athletic experience for people of color, along with teammate Chelsea Kung ’23.

She described talks within the tennis team on the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion as positive spaces for discussion. Overall, Wang described the tennis team as working to foster a positive environment for athletes, especially through the pandemic.

“Athletics is very easy to just try and have the mindset to forget all on court and just play,” Wang said. “But sometimes it’s best to talk about it and create an open space for discussion.”

The women’s tennis Ivy League season concluded on Sunday.

In 2018, Asians were 60 percent less likely to have received mental health treatment services in comparison to white people.

Contact HAMERA SHABBIR at hamera.shabbir@yale.edu .

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

SPECIAL ISSUE AMPLIFYING

AAPI VOICES

A look at Asians at the News Cont’d from B1 She noted that a part of this problem might be a lack of diversity in sourcing and perspectives being put into stories.

“A lot of times, I read stories [that are] definitely showing only one socio-economic, class, racial and gender experience,” Shabbir said. “Moving forward, YDN can do a better job of sourcing and considering what it thinks is newsworthy, given that there are a lot of stories that go uncovered that should be covered because they do have significance to the larger population and spark discussions outside of the YDN.” In a similar vein, Yu mentioned that diversity work at the News is often seen as a “side thing that’s to be performed out by people of color.”

According to him, other barriers might include not fitting the stereotype of what the typical journalist looks like, especially given that very few of the “star journalists” from the News who end up working at the Washington Post or the New York Times are Asian.

Yu noted that even in pop culture, most people in the newsroom are white journalists. For example, in the TV show Gilmore Girls, the characters Rory Gilmore, Paris Geller, Doyle McMaster and Logan Huntzberger all are reporters at the News and all are white people.

However, the Asian character Lane Kim, who did not attend Yale, was not a journalist.

“Could Lane have been a journalist? We will never know,” said Yu. “In popular narratives, we just haven’t been journalists. To be fair, there have been increases in diversity at the News …

I think maybe part of [the issue] is linked to the

News’ wider problem of being over competitive.

And competition that’s limited to very few people often leads to the same kinds of identities being represented.”

Overall, though, Yu and Shabbir both emphasized that there is a great community in the News of Asian American and Asian journalists that help each other out with sourcing and editing, along with internships and professional opportunities.

“My experience with my identity and the YDN intersecting has been an experience of personal growth and professional growth at the same time, while also building a strong network and hoping to hold the door open for other people down the line,” said Shabbir.

What the News has currently done in its efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion have made profound impacts in the institution. However, we still need to put more deliberate effort into ensuring that more groups across campus are covered and that articles have diverse sourcing. This burden does not lie with people of color. We have put in the effort.

As I continue to explore my identity in college, reporting for the News has helped me become more aware of my surroundings and find ways to increase diversity and inclusion in my stories whether through sourcing or content coverage — and my identity as an Asian woman influences that experience.

But clearly, more work needs to be done, and I hope to be a part of that change as I continue as a member of the News.

// JESSAI FLORES

Contact SOPHIE WANG at sophie.wang@yale.edu .

To Yingying // BY YINGYING ZHAO Over winter break, I went back home and saw my parents, friends, and more snow. After having dinner at the Mexican place downtown and boba for dessert, my friend Lauren and I decided to wander around. Small flakes began to fall, coating the sidewalks and roads in a thin layer of white. We trudged on through the coldness, snow sticking to our black leather Doc Martens.

Neither of us really wanted to go back home. We hadn’t talked in a long time — I had a whole lifetime of things to catch up on.

“What would you want to name your kids?” Lauren suddenly asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her.

She looked surprised. “You haven’t thought about it at all?”

“I guess.”

We crossed the street, ignoring the crosswalk signs.

“But like, if you had to choose something.

Anything.”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “I’d ask my parents to name them. Something Chinese.”

“Really?”

I glanced over at her. “What do you mean?”

Lauren shrugged. “I didn’t think you would say that.”

“Why?” But in my head, I knew what Lauren would say. I don’t think it’s any secret to my close friends that I’ve had a love-hate relationship with my name. Actually, love-hate is the wrong way to describe it: it’s more like an old wound, like the huge scab I got in middle school after I fell off my bike and slid across the basketball court pavement. And that wound opens and closes, and I can always feel a small sting that sometimes gets so large that I shouldn’t ignore it but I do anyway. Because it’s easier to not think about it then it is to constantly remember it’s there.

Imagine someone naming their kid Percy because they loved the Percy Jackson series: that’s a more modern version of what my mom did. She was — and still is — a huge fan of Ren Yingying, a character from “Xiào Ào Jiāng Hú” or in English, “The Smiling, Proud Wanderer,” a famous Chinese novel turned television series. In true fangirl style, she decided to have Ren Yingying be my namesake, though I’m definitely not a jaw-dropping gorgeous, evil-fighting princess warrior.

But my mom was probably thinking something along those lines: one of my nicknames in Chinese is “gōng zhǔ” — “princess” in Mandarin — and when I was little, she would have me wear brightly colored dresses, as if everyday was a ball. Although we moved to a new neighborhood when I was in fourth grade, the large Disney Magic Kingdom castle sticker from my old house was carefully packed and placed on the widest wall in my bedroom, overlooking my desk mirror.

In the beginning, I never realized how strange my name was to other people.

Yingying didn’t really mean anything to me — it was just what my parents said, what my brother tried to say because he was a toddler and couldn’t pronounce anything, what family friends called me. But in environments removed from the comfort of my own home and our small Chinese community, I learned that Yingying meant something to other people — and it wasn’t good.

I’m sure other people with non-English names have similar experiences: teachers struggling with pronunciation during roll call, the unpleasant “Where are you really from?” from ignorant strangers. I tried to let it not bother me too much: they didn’t have bad intentions, and in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t hurt.

“You’re so good at Spanish,” he said to me.

“Considering the fact that you had to learn English when you came over here — that’s really impressive.”

That’s really impressive.

That’s really impressive, he said, like English wasn’t my first language. Never mind that I couldn’t read any WeChat messages from my relatives in China, never mind that I could barely have a full conversation in Chinese, never mind that I only really considered myself fluent in Chinglish.

“That’s really impressive,” he said, like it was something I shouldn’t have been able to do.

Sometimes I think back to my second and last trip to Beijing. We lived in my grandma’s house — she became too sick to stay in her former

// MARK CHUNG

It just stung.

I smiled and shook my head when my teachers asked me if “preferred something else” and told them, “No, it’s just Yingying” and they smiled back and said “Wow, what a beautiful name” and then I wondered if they actually meant to comment on how “exotic” and “Oriental” my name was.

I told my eighth grade “Journalism 101” substitute teacher that “No, I really am from America,” and “Yes, I was born in the United States — in Massachusetts, in fact” and “Yes, my parents are Chinese, but I was born in America, so I’m American.”

I laughed it off when my elementary school classmate pointed out the fact that I have “an accent” and tried to brush off the anxiety from “But anyone can tell that you’re Chinese.”

But it was the boy in my seventh grade Spanish class that opened the wound so wide it wouldn’t close. We were work partners, and we sat next to each other everyday in class. We had been going to school together since I first entered the school district — almost four years.

WKND HOT TAKE Stephen Pitti is probably the next Y*le Coll*ge ****.

hometown — and there was no air conditioning. The heat was humid and sweltering, and my legs were covered in puffy mosquito bites. But in China, they still drink everything warm — coffee, tea, a glass of milk. Maybe my Americanness makes me like the opposite. I take everything iced, even in the winter. So when I asked for milk one morning, I was shocked to see my grandma put it in the microwave, and she was equally as shocked to hear that the milk in our household was always drunk straight from the refrigerator.

“This is better for your stomach,” she told me.

Small cultural differences about milk temperature preference aside, what I really remember from that trip is how my relatives perceived me. Like how all family reunions go, there was a lot of “Wow, you’re so big now!” and “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby!” and lots of hugging and too many dinners to attend. It was when I spoke that they seemed to recall why I had been gone — I was growing up in America.

I was growing up American.

“She sounds like she’s from the mountains,” my relatives said to my dad. “No one speaks her kind of Chinese.”

I knew what they meant — I wasn’t stupid.

There was no way my accent was going to sound native; after all, Chinese isn’t my native language. I was still mildly upset. Didn’t they know I was trying? Didn’t they know that English was my first language and Chinese was my second?

Didn’t they know I wasn’t from China, that my parents had me in Amherst, a small collegetown in the middle of nowhere?

Or maybe they knew, and they expected more from me. My English impressed that boy from Spanish class. My Chinese disappointed my aunts and uncles.

In Chinese, Yingying is the same character twice: 盈盈. In Chinese, Yingying signifies fullness, roundness, a surplus. In Chinese, Yingying holds my mother’s fantasies and dreams.

I grew up as Yingying, and I learned Yingying meant answering where I really come from, where I was born, where I call home. Yingying meant being questioned and questioning myself, because who am I if everyone else tells me who I’m supposed to be? Yingying meant wondering whether I sound American, and if I didn’t, wondering how to fix it. Yingying meant I was stuck in that place between the boy who told me my English is impressive because he knew my name and made assumptions and everyone in China who forcibly reminded me that my Chinese was no better than that of a grade school child.

I’m older now, and I can’t necessarily say those meanings are gone. But I’m old enough that I can talk about the impressive English incident as a funny story because in a way, his ignorance was really funny, and I’m sure he doesn’t even remember who I am or what he said.

I’m older now, and I’m learning how to love Yingying. So I say it’s like a wound because it cuts deep — it’s over a decade’s worth of minor pains. My relationship with Yingying ebbs and flows, and I don’t think we’ll ever be perfect.

Yet, there are times when I silently thank my mom for giving her to me, when the moon is shining bright through the big window in my room because I forgot to close the curtains even after my dad yelled at me. And even if the wound closes, I think it’ll leave a light scar like the one I have on my left knee — a sign that I survived.

In the end, I didn’t give Lauren a straight answer.

“I’ll keep thinking about it,” I said.

Yingying is something to keep thinking about. I’ll keep thinking and keep learning what it means to me. And I’ll think about how my mom says Yingying like it’s precious — as if addressing a noble princess.

Contact YINGYING ZHAO at yingying.zhao@yale.edu .

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND SPISSUE

Asian Girl Who Turned Red Watches “Turning Red” // BY KAYLA YUP When I was sixteen, I Turned Red. It was a teenager’s cliché attempt at setting the world on fire with red hair dye. I had quit my fast food job, broken up with my boyfriend and decided that the next natural step was to dye my hair red — becoming a visual wildfire. According to my dad, this meant I would next get a tramp stamp.

When I entered college, all that was left were red split-ends.

Over winter break, my mom trimmed those last fiery tendrils from my hair, leaving me a black pile of ashes. Over spring break, I watched “Turning Red’’ alone as a tribute to my own, retired Red Panda. Spoiler alert, it made me cry and want to spend my last day at home watching it with my mom. *** The opening scene of the movie introduces Meilin as the perfect Chinese daughter. She is studious, she is obedient and she is so cute. Meilin spends her afternoons helping her mother at the family temple, where they worship their ancestor Sun Yee. Her friends — who are not Chinese — however, think she has been brainwashed by her mom to be constantly working instead of chasing classic teenage fun.

After Meilin Turns Red, unleashing all the rage and emotions that trigger her Red Panda side, she stops trying to be perfect.

When her mother refuses to allow her to go to a boy band’s concert, Meilin and her friends create a fake math club while secretly making money for the concert tickets. The kicker is that instead of Meilin hiding her Red Panda as her mother commanded, she markets the novelty of it, profiting

off of photos, hugs, T-shirts and plenty of cute merchandise. Leading up to this, her mother recognizes a new look in her daughter’s eyes — one of genuine anger and frustration towards her.

As Meilin’s reality begins to unravel, so too does her personal history of “being brainwashed.”

The movie poses the question: is it worth honoring your family if you aren’t honoring yourself? A common struggle to those split between two cultures, this theme is a play on filial piety, urging the little Asian children watching to evaluate their obligation not only to their family but to themselves.

Ming, Meilin’s mom, ends up revealing that the curse of “turning red” is intergenerational. Even though centuries have passed since Sun Yee’s lifetime — in a whole different continent for that matter — all women in the family have gone through a phase of turning into giant red pandas upon bursts of emotion. But her own mother and several sisters have all physically locked up their pandas, in items ranging from jade bangles to a pendant. In a turn of events, when Meilin refuses to lock up her panda, Meilin’s mother’s own panda is unleashed.

I cried when Ming’s red panda finally escaped its confinement.

Ming’s red panda is a huge, terrifying force — and so is my mom when she turns red. But when the panda is freed, the intimidating mother figure of Ming suddenly becomes humanized. As my mother saw me in Meilin, I saw her in Ming. *** I resonate with “Turning Red” particularly because of its shift of the gender focus, from the stereotypical Kung Fu masters or elite

// KAYLA YUP

WKND Recommends hugging your senior friends.

entrepreneurs to Chinese daughters. Like how it unleashes the red pandas, the movie also unleashes itself from the male-centric orientation in traditional East Asian culture. My mom told me that my dad originally never wanted a daughter. My dad’s the type with black belts in three martial arts and an addiction to exercise. He clearly wanted strong sons and was naturally disappointed by my gender’s reveal until I entered the world and managed to change his mind. I guess I’m just that amazing.

It is refreshing to see that Meilin, the main character, is a girl and the family’s only child. I find it cathartically pleasing to see Meilin getting all the love, in a Chinese culture whose traditional gender biases skew towards the sons of a family. *** I think I can proudly say that I am my dad’s favorite, but everyone knows my mom likes my twin brother more. To be fair, he is a lot more obedient. He never turns red and can always be counted on to maintain a stable neutral state.

I, on the other hand, have a lot of loud emotions that are not always under control.

When I was a little girl who watched too much TV, I wondered why there were so many jokes about parents fearing the “diva” age of daughters, in which they were “moody” and “dramatic.”

Eight-year-old Kayla found those TV daughters rude and disrespectful and was confident that she would have enough self-control to remain a calm and composed daughter.

Well, high school Kayla was constantly a giant red panda. It wasn’t just because of the hor-

mones. Becoming a red panda was a necessary step on the way to recognizing a world beyond my home.

It was how I, and perhaps other Chinese daughters, strengthened their voices without necessarily sacrificing their past selves. *** Meilin is still dedicated to the temple at the end of the movie.

But at the same time, she also allows herself a life outside of it.

Meilin’s friends represent more Western attitudes towards familial obligations. They think she has been brainwashed because of how much of her life she devotes to her family unit.

They do not understand that, for Meilin, to “turn red” is to turn her whole family red. Even though I claim to have been a giant red panda, I recognized my limits. I can never allow myself to be the problem, just as Meilin never becomes truly selfish.

After all, selfishness does not salvage Meilin — being part of a family does.

Meilin’s extended family is almost a perfect mirror to my own. Meilin’s mom has several powerful Cantonese-speaking sisters, all in Canada. My mom hails from Hong Kong and has six sisters, all now living in America. But a deeper similarity lies in our mother-daughter relationships. In one of the final scenes of the movie, Meilin guides the younger versions of Ming to help her tame her panda. Ming is shown to be crying and in a state of distress similar to Meilin’s own “red” state.

It reminded me of the first time I saw my mom cry. When her closest sister died, I realized that my mom was not superhuman. And because she was human, I felt

that I could understand her, and she could understand me. *** “Turning Red” is for generations of Chinese daughters, mothers and grandmothers. It shows that these “intergenerational curses” are cyclical and are not meant to be endured alone. The curses can be resolved within a family, without dissolving the family.

While “Turning Red” celebrates personal freedom and extols individuality, it never stops celebrating actions that honor the family. The two are not mutually exclusive. They never have been. As I reflect on my first year at Yale, having cared for friends who turned red and having been the red panda that was cared for, I have learned my lesson at the intersection of traditional Chinese collectivist ideology and Western individualism. By recognizing yourself as an individual, you realize your individual impact on others and others’ individual impacts on you. “Turning Red” is not about Meilin finally taking control of her own life but rather her understanding what it means to be one individual in a loving, supportive network of many.

One of the biggest criticisms of “Turning Red” is that it is too “niche” of a movie. It is. But for all the people who have felt “niche” their whole life, it feels good to find a mainstream fit. “Turning Red” conjures youth in a pastel 90s wonderland with teenage heartthrobs, cuddly red pandas and a Chinese family’s love at its best. It’s intimate, and it’s the first movie to feel custom made for me and the people I love.

Contact KAYLA YUP at kayla.yup@yale.edu.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 29, 2022 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE 2

OPINION GUE ST COLUMNIST RE STY FUFUNAN

G U E S T C O L U M N I S T K A L A’ I A N D E R S O N

Let Them Drink Boba

Reflecting on Pacific Islander inclusion during AAPI month

I like boba. I’ve racked up countless Snackpass points at Loose Leaf; for my birthday, half of my gifts were Strawberry Matcha Lattes. In my prefrosh Facebook introduction post, I welcomed other Yalies to “hit me up if they want to be boba buds!”

I am not the only Asian American that likes boba. Far from it actually! There’s a whole class of Asian Americans derided as “boba liberals” who, just like the drink, tend to be mostly sugar and little substance. The term has come to encompass substanceless, apolitical, and commercialized liberal “activism” — one that reduces the complexity of the Asian American experience to mere tokens — like boba. Twitter user @diaspora_red is commonly cited as the original articulator of many of the ideas, and they conceptualize boba liberalism as “thinking t-shirts, products, and merchandise are the main way of affirming one’s racial identity.” It is the epitome of performative activism. They’ll show up in droves to 88rising concerts but fail to match that energy for South and Southeast Asian creatives. They’ll clamor for #representASIAN but fail to recognize how other axes like class, gender and sexuality interact with — and are inseparable from — racial representation. They’ll fight for the elevation of “Asian American culture,” but it’s a narrow conception: one that prioritizes an upper-class, predominantly East Asian-centric experience.

YET, FOR ME AND COUNTLESS OTHER ASIAN AMERICANS, BOBA LIBERALISM WAS A STARTING POINT. IT MADE ME THINK ABOUT ASIAN AMERICAN ISSUES IN THE FIRST PLACE — EVEN IF MY CONCEPTIONS WERE NOT FULLY FLESHED OUT. Yet, for me and countless other Asian Americans, boba liberalism was a starting point. It made me think about Asian American issues in the first place — even if my conceptions were not fully fleshed out.

Entering political spaces is intimidating; those who wish to broaden

their political consciousness may be put off by the ease at which organizers can deftly articulate theoretical frameworks and historical contexts at seeming ease. How, then, can grassroots movements appeal to a broader audience?

A couple weeks ago, “Pachinko” author Min Jin Lee returned to campus to deliver a talk. I got the opportunity to ask her a question live, and I asked about her experiences in Asian American organizing during her time as a student here at Yale.

She left me with one guiding principle: “I’m trying to build the largest tent with the strongest players.”

At first glance, boba liberals may not seem like players at all — perhaps more eager to go to Whale Tea than to go to a protest. Under their materialism, however, boba liberals are ultimately just Asian Americans passionate about their communities. How can we redirect this passion to create material change?

The Asian American Alliance at Yale is committed to building the largest tent possible. Coalition-building has always been central to our work. In 1969, co-founder Don Nakanishi, picked up “Asian-sounding names” from a phonebook. Thirty-five students — out of the only 50 or so on campus — answered the call and gathered over dinner. Over the years, AASA has served many roles: a coalition of clubs, a community outreach organization, an occasional headache for Yale administrators. It has always, however, remained firm to its commitment to elevating the political consciousness of Asian Americans.

These days, more than fifty years later, our meetings still look about the same. We meet in the AACC’s living room — a space our predecessors fought to claim decades ago.

Over the past academic year, our efforts have ranged from our massive Night Market to intimate discussions. These past few years, one of the most requested topics for our signature “What is Asian American?” discussion has been boba liberalism. Most of those in attendance — including, in 2020, myself — were just beginning to reckon with the political implications of their identity. We breezed through a crash course on diasporic history; now, I can recite the lecture by heart. I am grateful to have had this space to grow, and I hope that we continue to be a place for all Asian Americans — including boba liberals — to be comfortable exploring and expanding the complexities of their identity.

Look out in the fall for AASA’s open meeting times. I promise our tent is quite big here — sometimes, we even have free boba.

RESTY FUFUNAN is a sophomore in Trumbull College. He is a co-moderator of the Asian American Students Alliance. Contact him at resty.fufunan@yale.edu .

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COPYRIGHT 2022 — VOL. CXLIV, NO. 22

In the United States, the month of May is meant to recognize Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage, a group historically labeled as AAPI. Often, however, the “PI” of “AAPI” is neglected and such discourse focuses predominantly on Asian American narratives.

My name is Kala’i Anderson and I am a Native Hawaiian first-year student at Yale College, and a Peer Liaison for the Native American Cultural Center, or NACC. With AAPI month upon us, I find myself grappling with a prominent issue that this time of year intensifies: the conflation of Pacific Islander identities with Asian American ones. For years, I have witnessed and consumed countless articles and journals that claim to highlight the stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, yet upon completion, I find that the majority of these publications feature zero Pacific Islander narratives.

It is quite literally the definition of performative activism and representation, and to be frank, I would prefer the month of May to be called AA Heritage Month instead. Yale is no exception — even now, I find myself writing to be featured in the YDN’s AAPI special edition issue, yet for a month dedicated to both

AA and PI, only one article is from the perspective of a Pacific Islander.

In my experience as a Pacific Islander at Yale College, it can be difficult to navigate social circles in relation to cultural upbringing. Because Pacific Islanders compose such a small percentage of the undergraduate population — around 0.2 percent — the resources and spaces we are allotted are of a similar minuscule size.

Staff of both the NACC and the Asian American Cultural Center, or AACC, have approached me to state that Pacific Islanders are welcome at either cultural house, but this messaging fails to address the fact that Pacific Islanders fall into neither of these two categories. While both cultural centers have been extremely welcoming on a personal level — and the NACC in particular has allowed me to to interact with other Indigenous students — I cannot validate either organization as a space that truly represents Pacific Islander experiences.

This conflation of identities prompts non-Pacific Islanders to misinterpret what legitimate Pacific Islander culture looks like. If an article features a title including “AAPI,” but only features

Asian-centered narratives, how is the intended audience supposed to differentiate between what is and is not Pacific Islander? They cannot. And this misinformation, too, is present in the Yale community.

For example, during Bulldog Days, I had the opportunity to speak with incoming first years, one of which was surprised to learn both that Native Hawaiians existed and that the word “aloha,” which is a Hawaiian greeting meaning “love,” is not in fact a word of East Asian origin.

While these experiences are purely my own, I believe that many other Pacific Islanders at Yale and across the country share similar sentiments about the term AAPI and the month of May. It is a constant push and pull between wanting more representation in media that labels itself as AAPI, yet simultaneously longing for separation from Asian American tangential spaces. While both groups have experienced similar historical processes and trauma, to link us under one term is a blatant disregard for the unique beauty that each group has to offer.

KALA’I ANDERSON is a first-year in Berkeley College. Contact him at kalai.anderson@yale.edu .

GUEST COLUMNIST MOLLIE JOHNSON

Shut DKE Down Now Content warning: This article contains mention of sexual violence.

Last week, the News reported that Delta Kappa Epsilon is returning to Yale. But why is Yale giving the fraternity that seems to have more complaints for sexual misconduct than any other campus organization yet another chance?

As it has before, DKE is taking advantage of the short-term institutional memory that is inherent to four-year universities to return to campus life. It has never changed its ways before; what makes anyone think it will now?

I personally know the pain caused by Yale’s refusal to shut DKE down. During my junior year, the president of DKE raped me just months after publicly praising his organization for becoming a safer place for women and learning from its sordid past. After a long and difficult investigation, Yale suspended him for “penetration without consent” until after I graduated. My senior year, after 10 women came forward in spring 2018 with sexual misconduct allegations against members of the fraternity, I penned an anonymous op-ed in this very newspaper, begging Yale to finally take action and shut DKE down.

Today, four years later, I can tell my story under my own name. I no longer fear retaliation from Yale.

As an involved alumna who cares deeply about the institution and its students, I simply cannot stand by and watch history repeat itself.

No one should go through what I went through.

In fall 2016, at the fraternity’s annual Christmas party, DKEmas, the then-president cornered me and ignored me when I repeatedly said “no” to his advances. The next morning, I did what I was “supposed” to do. I went to the hospital. I got a rape kit. I immediately reported the assault to Yale and the New Haven police.

Then, I waited. The man who had raped me lived blocks from my home, ate in the same dining halls and studied in the same libraries.

After a year the NHPD admitted they lost my file, and that my case had been “a mistake from an investigative point of view.”

It was only thanks to Obama-era Title IX guidelines, which – crucially – are no longer in place, that I was able to seek justice through the university. After a few grueling months, the committee ruled in my favor, and I was able to graduate on time, with honors, spared from the fear and trauma of sharing a campus with the man who raped me.

Today’s students do not have this level of protection from the fed-

eral government after the Trump administration gutted Title IX. Now, universities can ignore any sexual misconduct that occurs off campus, outside of officially recognized university programs and activities. Despite existing steps from campus and being exclusively inhabited by Yale students, Yale’s fraternity houses fall into this category, an open secret that means regulation can be bypassed with a wink and a nod. Unlike Yale’s previous sexual misconduct policy, which did not limit protection by location, Yale’s new policy makes it clear that it applies only to sexual misconduct in “Yale-related” off-campus activities. Under this new regime, I would have had no recourse because I was raped in the wrong place.

It is notable that the new Trump Title IX regulations force schools and universities to handle sexual assaults differently from any other crime. With hate crimes and robberies, for example, schools discipline students regardless of where the crime occurred. The reasoning?

Those crimes endanger the greater community. Why should sexual assault be any different?

DKE withdrew from campus life in 2018 under one set of federal guidelines, and it is now returning to an entirely different reality. The erosion of these important Title IX protections makes DKE’s official return to Yale all the more horrifying, and the need for Yale to take action all the more urgent.

Let me pause, and share a short history of DKE’s recent issues.

In 2010, the fraternity’s pledges got nationwide press after marching outside the Yale Women’s Center chanting “No means yes, yes means anal!” and “I f— dead women and fill them with my semen!”

Shortly after, 16 students and alumnae filed a civil rights complaint against DKE with the Department of Education. The Yale College Executive Committee then convened for months before finally banning DKE from campus for five years. This toothless ban had little effect: During its period of formal sanctioning, DKE regularly hosted events and continued to recruit members. Shockingly, its membership numbers actually increased.

And, as it often does, DKE made a big show of celebrating a culture change. In 2016, immediately after the ban was lifted, the then-president of the fraternity told the News that it had a “positive impact” on DKE’s culture. I have reason to dispute that: just two months later, he raped me.

Unfortunately, my experience was not unique. After a 2018 Busi-

ness Insider article about two DKE assaults (against me and another Yale student), eight other women forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against members of the fraternity.

DKE again sought to present itself as non-threatening. In response, the fraternity conducted an internal investigation that ultimately found “no evidence of a culture of sexual hostility or sexual harassment.”

Remarkably, DKE did not find it important to interview a woman, let alone a survivor of sexual assault, in coming to this conclusion.

The public relations nightmare that ensued forced Yale to formally review DKE’s behavior, which it took 11 months to do.

The University’s ultimate report condemned DKE’s culture – described by students as a “meat market” for women – and encouraged students not to attend the fraternity’s events. Despite this, Yale still refused to sanction the organization, citing the impossibility of regulating off-campus organizations. That’s a bogus charge: Peer institutions like Princeton have managed to do so with relative ease.

After the 2018 allegations, DKE’s landlord had had enough – the group lost its lease that fall, handicapping its ability to host large student parties.

Since 2018 the group’s public presence has been diminished, at least until now.

Yale once again finds itself at a turning point with DKE. On Sunday, DKE plans to kick off its return to campus with a “Bacchanalian” event.

Stomping out dangerous organizations is not the responsibility of individual Yale students – that duty falls on the Yale administration, which has repeatedly neglected the safety of its students by ignoring DKE’s obvious problems. DKE has never reformed itself, despite a near constant ebb and flow of bans and binge drinking, sanctions and sexual assaults.

Time and time again, it has proven its failure to learn anything of value from its past.

So, I’m writing to say enough: Too many women have been collateral damage of DKE’s indisputable institutional rot and Yale’s inaction: Shut DKE down now.

MOLLIE JOHNSON ’18 is the Practice Manager of McAllister Olivarius, a transatlantic law firm that specializes in fighting sex discrimination in educational institutions and employment settings.

Contact her at mollie.johnson@aya.yale.edu .