RESTON, Virginia -- William Kim still calls the cell phone of his son, a 21-year-old senior at Virginia Tech, just to hear his voice. He feels cheated out of a chance to save his only boy.

Daniel Kim, 21, was a senior at Virginia Tech who had fallen into a deep depression after last year's massacre.

His son, Daniel Kim, wasn't a victim of last year's massacre that left 32 students and professors dead. His son committed suicide eight months later, after falling into a deep depression.

A Korean-American, Kim feared that classmates might mistake him for shooter Seung-Hui Cho.

Imagine for a minute if student leaders at elite college campuses devoted themselves to mocking black people or Jewish people or gay people. I’m not talking about drunk students posting pictures of their offensive parties on Facebook, but student newspaper editors – thought of as being both smart and progressive – giving space over for the sole purpose of making fun of people because of their background. It’s hard to imagine. And yet recently this phenomenon of racial caricatures as “satire” has emerged with Asian Americans as the object of the jokes.

Why Asian Americans? After all, Asian American college students tend to make headlines as super students, attending prestigious private and public colleges at rates way above their state demographics (hence they are “over-represented") and as excelling academically above and beyond any other racial group, whites included. This “model minority” image is not new and has been around since at least the late 1960s, with Asian Americans often embraced as symbols of the merits of hard work and individual effort, all undertaken without complaint or political agitation. So ... shouldn’t that mean that Asian Americans would be seen as well integrated — academic and otherwise — with white students?

Despite the growing number of immigrant students in schools throughout the country, many schools lack the expertise to adequately serve second language students. In fact, many school districts face a shortage of certified bilingual and English language learner (ELL) teachers. Although there is a significant body of research that suggests that bilingual education programs are most effective, most Asian American students who are English language learners are placed in English as a second language (ESL) classes or other English-only environments (Hakuta & Pease-Alvarez, 1992; Ramirez, 1991). ESL classes have been criticized for focusing on oral communication at the expense of academic skills, offering low academic standards, and segregating students (Olsen, 1997; Valdes, 2001). ESL classes have also been criticized for its assimilative nature. Valenzuela writes:

The very rationale of English as a Second Language (ESL)—the predominant language program at the high school level—is subtractive. As ESL programs are designed to transition youth into an English only curriculum, they neither reinforce their native language skills nor their cultural identities. (Valenzuela, 1999, p. 26)

The academic achievements of Asian Americans cannot be solely attributed to Asian cultural values. Rather, as for other ethnic minority groups, their behavioral patterns, including achievements, are a product of cultural values (i.e., ethnicity) and status in society (minority group standing). Using the notion of relative functionalism, we believe that the educational attainments of Asian Americans are highly influenced by the opportunities present for upward mobility, not only in educational endeavors but also in noneducational areas.

Noneducational areas include career activities such as leadership, entertainment, sports, politics, and so forth, in which education does not directly lead to the position. To the extent that mobility is limited in noneducational avenues, education becomes increasingly salient as a means of mobility. That is, education is increasingly functional as a means for mobility when other avenues are blocked.

By Suein Hwang
©2005 Wall Street Journal
November 19, 2005

CUPERTINO, Calif. -- By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.

But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.

As a civil rights activist and Republican Cabinet member, Arthur Fletcher had a long and distinguished career as an advisor to Republican Presidents from Richard Nixon to George H.W Bush.  Fletcher, who died last month at the age of 80, was known as the “Father of Affirmative Action” from his pioneering work as Assistant Secretary of Labor during the late 1960s. 

As executive director of the United Negro College Fund in the mid-1970s, he was credited with coining the slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”  For college-bound Asian-American students, it’s a catchphase that serves as an ironic reminder of his Affirmative Action legacy.

Asian Americans commit half of suicides at Cornell

Cornell Minds Matter, a new student group focusing on mental health issues on campus, organized a lecture by Wai Kwong Wong, Ph.D. of Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS), to address mental health concerns in the Cornell Asian community yesterday. The lecture, entitled "Breaking the Silence," focused on encouraging members of the Asian community to seek help and talk about mental health concerns.

Laura Alves '07, a member of the Cornell Minds Matter executive board, decided to organize the event, because "the stats [on Asian American mental health issues] we got were daunting, and I thought, we should have a forum to make Asian students aware that these problems exist."

According to Wong, Asian students at Cornell commit 50 percent of completed student suicides, even though they make up only 17 percent of the entire Cornell population. Asian students are also most likely to report problems with stress, sleep, sexually or physically abusive relationships and hopelessness. Asian students are least likely to utilize CAPS, and when they do, they are often very reluctant, referred by a faculty member and visit only a few times.

New organization promotes activism and expression

By Megha Garg
©2005 The Hurricane (University of Miami)
April 26, 2005

A quiet presence on campus has emerged over the past year and a half, slowly raising its voice. It started with the three-day Screaming Monkeys symposium the Fall 2003 semester and continued with a number of events for Asian Pacific American Heritage (APAH) month. It became louder with the Tsunami Open Mic Marathon in February, where the entire UM community came together to raise money for the tragedy. Now, Screaming Monkeys is becoming an official organization on campus to serve as a means for all cultures to express themselves.

"What we want is more than Asian-American involvement," Liz Dy, president of Screaming Monkeys, said. "We want it to be a club for social awareness, social activism and artistic expression."

The University of Virginia has the phrase "we envision a community of understanding, tolerance and respect" emblazoned across its Diversity Web site. But what is this community and who makes it up? As the noted by the lead editorial "Seeing all colors" on April 6 that referenced remarks made at the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM) Opening Ceremonies, the University does not see all colors when dealing with racial diversity, but only two.

The creation of the Asian Pacific American Studies minor is an example of the University's slowly evolving understanding of diversity. The members of the future community will get the opportunity to learn about the significance of Asian Pacific Americans (APA) in academics and the history of America. We now have the minor due to the hard work and intense lobbying of students and professors over the past 10 years.

A week ago, InSight, the only Asian-American women's organization on campus, gathered for a weekly dinner meeting, and the topic of conversation turned to the prevalence of the "Asian fetish" in American culture. We discussed the social significance of this obsessive sexual fixation on Asian women in a larger context, including the stereotyped portrayal of Asian women in the media and its relation to the growing mail-order bride industry.

What we didn't realize at the time of the discussion was the disgusting form that this fetish had taken on a nearby college campus. Recently, Princeton graduate student Michael Lohman admitted to police that he had been silently terrorizing more than 50 Asian women on campus by clipping snippets of their hair, spraying them with his urine and pouring his semen or urine in their drinks at university dining halls when they weren't looking. After three years of these repulsive acts, investigators finally caught up with and arrested Lohman last week. They searched his campus apartment and found stolen underwear and women's hair stuffed into mittens that he had been using for sexual self-gratification.

The N-Word. "Gay" South Hall. "Asian Nation." Although these three phrases appear to have no commonalities, they have all been associated with bias incidents on the University Campus. When analyzing a bias incident, it is not important to look at whether or not there is a universal reaction to particular words or actions, but to determine whether the incident is capable of invoking a physiological response in an individual.

Everyone experiences a bias incident differently. To dismiss an individual's reaction with an assumption that it is solely "personal" is in fact disregarding the entire incident. If there was a physiological response, such as your heart racing or your knees buckling, it indicates that the remark or action was more than just a "joke" or "playful banter." A physiological response to a bias incident may come as a result of many emotions, including fear, anger, anxiety, isolation, confusion and a desire to be invisible.

Recently, The Sun inadvertently offered a fine illustration of the problem of "conceptual invisibility" discussed in my own March 10 Mind Matters lecture, "Breaking the Silence: Destigmatizing Mental Health in the Asian and Asian American community." In the very issue that our community's paper of record published a thoughtful article covering the event, it also ran Stephen Davis's "The Adventures of Antman" comic in which "over-achieving, curve-busting" Asian and Asian American students are objectified and vilified, along with Ithaca's infamous weather, the hilly campus and sky-rocketing tuition, as "terrible things" at Cornell. Laura Harder, author of the piece on the lecture, even makes note of the resentment and problems caused by stereotypes of Asian and Asian American students as self-reliant, problem-free math and science geniuses -- the "CyberAsians" of "Antman." Although one might be tempted to attribute this juxtaposition of the feature article and the cartoon to racism or to dismiss it as merely lack of editorial vigilance, we would rather look on it as part of a larger, more pervasive problem that has been at the center of our work as Cornell's Asian and Asian American Campus Climate Taskforce (3ATF) -- a problem that makes Davis's cartoon (and the Sun's decision to publish it) no laughing matter.

Recent articles printed in the Daily regarding representation of Asian American students at Tufts have sparked debate over university policies in admissions. As a group of concerned students from the Asian Community at Tufts and Asian American Curriculum Transformation, we would like to voice to the Tufts community our concerns that still stand after reading "Need Blind Admissions: Setting the Record Straight" (March 7) by President Bacow and Dean Coffin.

The small number of Asian Americans who become K-12 teachers has often been noted. According to June Gordon of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the reasons usually advanced are the "same mainstream views that are offered for overall lack of participation by minority students in general, claiming that low wages and multiple career choices are the principal obstacles within a context of continuing racial discrimination." Other hypotheses include the disrespectful way Asian teachers are treated in American schools and the "prestige hypothesis," which proposes that Asians prefer a career requiring technical expertise in an environment where racial discrimination is minimal. Gordon's research appears in the February 2000 issue of Teachers College Record.

Gathering commemorates decade since fight for minor in Asian American studies

The Asian Pacific American Coalition gathered Wednesday at the Multicultural Center to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the 1995 hunger strike when students demanded an Asian American studies program at Northwestern.

At the meeting members evaluated the program's progress and discussed ways to strengthen curricula.

Since 1991 the Asian American Advisory Board held student-organized seminars and petition drives to demand the creation of an Asian American academic program. Efforts to put pressure on university administrators culminated in a 21-day hunger strike at The Rock in 1995.

The legally-sanctioned divide between students of different races was struck down by the Supreme Court 50 years ago, but on some college campuses, the de facto form of segregation that lingered is still prevalent, a new survey finds.

A survey by the Higher Education Research Institution claims that College freshmen today are less likely to socialize with students from other races than in previous years."

850 students attend Asian-American workshops, speeches

By Uri Friedman
©2005 The Daily Pennsylvanian (University of Pennsylvania)
February 21, 2005

Approximately 850 Asian-Pacific American students from over 120 East Coast colleges convened at Penn this weekend, and amid workshops, speeches, comedy shows and parties they kept one major concept in mind: power. The students congregated at the University for the 28th Annual East Coast Asian American Student Union Conference, which is hosted by a different college every year, and is the largest gathering of Asian-Pacific American students in the United States.

LOS ANGELES — Filipino American Christy Nierva, a student activities coordinator at the University of California in San Diego, Calif., learned the primary language of her parents and grandparents in California public schools.

She credits Filipino classes taken from 1988 to 1991 for opening her eyes to her own cultural identity. In turn, the new perspective helped to improve her relationship and level of communication with her family.

Other U.S.-born and bred Filipinos stand to lose the same opportunity due to a loophole in the federal No Child Left Behind Act that requires teachers to be credentialed in the subject they teach. Unfortunately, the credentialing process that would make teachers qualified to teach the Filipino subject has been overlooked. No exam for such credentialing even exists.

Forget "The Apprentice." For real competition, check out "The Applicant" --a contest in which high-achieving Asian kids from New Jersey's moneyed suburbs jockey for the Ivy League. Consider the case of a Chinese-American girl at Holmdel High School. Her grades and test scores were top-notch, she ran cross-country and she was an accomplished pianist. Still, her prospects seemed uncertain.

The problem: her all-too-familiar profile.

She didn't, and couldn't, stand out among her peers. She ranked in the top 20 percent in the highly competitive school where nearly a fifth of the students are Asian.

Among fried Indian samosas and chocolate chip cookies, the South Asian Political Forum "Sangam" hosted a seminar to discuss South-Asian American hate crimes. The discussion focused on two recent radio clips from Philadelphia's Power99-FM and New York City's Hot97.

Power99 recently aired a clip which included the verbal abuse of an Indian woman.

Multiculturalism is key to diversity of all kinds - especially intellectual

By Tim Kim
Letter to the Editor
©2004 The Colgate Maroon-News
December 3, 2004

This is a response to Brandy Bones' editorial in the 11/19 issue of The Maroon-News titled "A Narrow Image of Diversity: Broadening Our Horizon Beyond Multiculturalism." In her editorial Bones asks: "What evidence proves that an increase in minority population would enhance the Colgate community?" While I agree with Bones in that intellectual diversity is crucial at an educational institution, I disagree with her presumptions that multiculturalism would not enhance the quality of education at Colgate. Rather, I see multiculturalism as one of the most powerful vehicles to intellectual diversity. This belief is not speculative, but based on historical evidence of American society as well as Colgate University itself.

Undermining the myth of the model minority

Vivian Shuh Ming Louie, assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE), doesn't have to look far to see how the myth of Asian Americans as a "model minority" has gained such traction in the American imagination. After all, she embodies it. The daughter of Chinese immigrants who worked in New York City's restaurant and garment industries, she boasts a resume dotted with the education world's most coveted brand names: Andover Phillips Academy, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.

Yet even as she was marching proudly through academia, earning a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale and a fellowship and ultimately assistant professorship at Harvard, Louie saw family members and friends from her former Chinatown neighborhood struggling to stay in, or get into, college. Turning a scholarly lens on this experience, Louie has produced "Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans" (Stanford University Press, 2004).

Luoluo Hong, an activist and educator, wasn't allowed to date until she was 25 years old. She couldn't see a movie until age 21, and her opportunities to socialize with friends were limited.

Since Hong was a young girl growing up in Baltimore, she said her Chinese father and Taiwanese mother discouraged her from being assertive and from voicing her own opinion.

"I felt very isolated from my peers and continued to feel this real divide," Hong said Wednesday night at Cardinal Hall.

But for Hong, now 35, all that has changed.

Once again, Tufts has shown its lack of commitment to diversifying the curriculum. Last spring, a joint proposal between the history department and American studies program was submitted to the deans. However, after much waiting, this position was denied, the answer given shortly before school started without any explanation to the departments about the decision taken. The position, for a tenured-tracked Asian American historian specializing in immigration, was a collaborative effort between the department and program as a means of integrating Asian American history - one that is often marginalized and held invisible - into Tufts' curriculum. As a joint position, this proposal would help to meet an increasing demand for Asian American studies by student voices.

Courses dealing with Asian Pacific Americans exist at MSU, but this semester marks the first time students are able to elect the studies as a specialization.

Faculty, staff and students have been trying to heighten Asian-American awareness at MSU for the past 20 years said Maggie Chen Hernandez, director of the Multicultural Center. Specializations already exist for several other minority groups on campus, such as Chicano, Latino and black studies.

Andrea Louie, associate professor of anthropology, announced during the Asian Pacific American Student Organization welcome reception Monday the dream of an Asian Pacific American Studies specialization was finally realized.