A Brief History and Overview

In the early 1970s, AASA was the only Asian American Student Group on Yale's Campus. And now...

(AASA) serves two functions. It is the vehicle for both pan-Asian American unity and Asian American political action on the Yale campus.

Structurally, it serves as the umbrella organization for many Asian American groups on campus and consists of AASA moderator(s) together with the AASA officers. In addition, its executive board consists of the presidents of the nine member ethnic organizations.

This organization is meant to attract students who are active in their specific ethnic groups as well as students who prefer to engage themselves in pan-Asian activities; these committees, therefore, are open to all interested students. Issues tackled by AASA include diversifying faculty and curricula, increasing funding for Asian American student activities, strengthening the Asian American Cultural Center, addressing the rise in hate crimes, reaching out to immigrants and Asian American families, increasing political representation.

2010 Goals

Dear Yale Community,

It has been our pleasure serving on AASA's 2009 board. Our two co-moderators last year, Peter Lu (BK '11) and Vi Nguyen (DC '11), took the organization to new heights and set a high standard for AASA in this coming year. AASA 2009 accomplished new events— 40^th anniversary banquet, the first ever AASA cultural show, Harvard-Yale Elixir dance, just to name a few, and improved past events – Prelude and Fall Fusion were markedly better than previous years. Certainly, AASA 2009 has left us with big shoes to fill, but AASA 2010 plans on not only filling those shoes, but also outgrowing them.

For this year, our vision is to build upon the successful events of the past while introducing new events to further fulfill AASA's role in the political and historical arena.

2010 is an important year for AASA. It marks not only the beginning of a new decade, but also AASA's 5^th decade of existence. As Rocky Chin, one of the founders of AASA, mentioned at last year's 40^th anniversary master's tea, Asian Americans have had a rich history at Yale and we, as a community, need to start embracing and documenting our past. An effort has been started to archive Asian American historical documents in Sterling Memorial Library and AASA has partnered with the AACC to spearhead this project.

In addition, 2010 is a census year and one of AASA's political priorities is to ensure that the Asian American population is not underrepresented. Here on campus, AASA's political focus will be to collaborate with other groups, both within and outside of the Asian American community. We plan on holding monthly discussion panels and master's teas, which should increase the quality of AASA's political activities on par with that of our social and cultural events.

Our social and cultural events will have the aim of bringing the Asian American and Yale community closer together. One event with the potential to achieve this goal is a campus-wide world record attempt. Of course, we plan on keeping and improving upon our social and cultural events in the past—look for a second, even better cultural show this year.

In service,

Christine Chen (PC '12)

David Zhang (ES '12)

2010 AASA Co-Moderators

2009 Goals