The NAASCon Leadership Summit
March 21-23, 2003
By Tiffany Lee, Staff Writer

If I had to describe the last three days of this past spring break in three words, I would use: inspiring, motivating, and definitely fun. Being at the University of Pennsylvania for the first ever National Asian American Student Conference (NAASCon) Leadership Summit was a great experience and I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon. It was awesome to see so many A/P/A students make the trip to Philly for this first ever conference, some coming all the way from California, Texas, and Utah! I thought about how great it was to see all these students there to support and learn from this ground-breaking event, and I was amazed by how far some students traveled to be there for the three days.

I wasn’t alone attending this conference; two other students completed our NYU contingent - Jennifer Tan for the Asian American Women’s Alliance, and Angeline Chan, from GenerAsian. After checking in with our "hosts," registering, and getting a quick tour of the campus, we wandered around the streets of Philly until it was time for the NAASCon Opening Ceremonies, which basically welcomed us to the summit and laid out the plans for the next few days. Following that was an Open Mic/Performing Arts Showcase, headlined by Yellow Rage, an awesome spoken word group.

The next day was a busy one, filled with workshops, speakers, and the most important part of the summit, The Power of Numbers Forum. The morning began with a powerful and moving speech given by K.W. Lee, one of the first Asian Pacific Americans recognized in mainstream media as an investigative reporter for the Sacramento Union and a strong supporter of Asian American civil rights and social justice causes. Following some icebreaker games that got us acquainted with one another, we headed off into workshops of our choice, covering such topics as building useful skills for better communication by learning how to conduct successful meetings, interacting with university administration, guerilla media tactics, building multicultural coalitions, and affirmative action. I definitely learned a lot from each one I attended, and it was really great hearing other students’ stories about what’s going on at their campuses and discussing ideas about what we can do to make changes. The day ended with the forum, where all of us commenced to start a dialogue about what issues are important to us and to establish lines of communication amongst A/P/A students regionally and nationwide. We broke off in groups to discuss our goals and possible campaigns, university and regional networking, tools for communication, and the creation of an A/P/A national student conference. Later on that evening, we screened Arirang, a documentary on Korean American immigration, in which Mr. K.W. Lee once again spoke.

The next morning after breakfast, we convened for the last time to finish up what we had started in the forum the previous day. The conference technically ended at noon, but we couldn’t say our final goodbyes quite yet, so a whole lot of us went out for lunch. It was almost as if we were this big family, if not a group of people who bonded really quickly and became friends as a result of coming together to "network, socialize, empower each other and ourselves, perform, dialogue, organize campaigns and projects, educate, to DEMONSTRATE OUR POWER, to CREATE CHANGE, and to REPRESENT ASIAN AMERICA."

The three of us reluctantly returned to New York, in awe of the three days we had just experienced, inspired by the fellow students we had met and befriended. We left though, determined to carry back with us to NYU what we had learned there, so that we may spread the message and truly show the "power in numbers."

What I realized from all this that went on at NAASCon is how so many individuals, especially young people, are working to represent Asian America and make a difference. I never really knew about all these empowering Asian organizations/conferences like NAASCon, APAHE, and ECASU until coming to college. It was something new for me to see it here, but clearly it’s happening on campuses all over the country. I guess these are the years when students really develop the desire to have their voices heard, speak out against what they feel is wrong, and work endlessly until change is made. My eyes have been opened to so many issues that I see actually affect me, and so I feel this need to get more involved. Asians have been subjected to a lot of injustices and it’s about time that we take a stand. Coming together and sharing ideas at these meetings, conferences, and or events is just one of the many ways to get things accomplished. We are fortunate here at NYU to have an A/P/A Studies Program, but many other campuses across the country are still working towards theirs. Even so, there still remains a lot to be done on our campus.