Deans Reject Asian American Student Center
By Jenny Mertz-Shea
News Associate

Members of the Asian-American Student Alliance (AASA) wrangled with representatives from the Five-College Student Affairs Committee (SAC), on Monday, Feb. 24, over the proposed creation of a five-college Asian-American Student Center (AASC). AASA's $750,000 proposal was rejected indefinitely by the Claremont University Consortium (CUC) in December, invoking the ire of some students.

"I thought the meeting went poorly," Dean of Students Ann Quinley observed with a sigh.

Meanwhile, AASA representatives Anna Kim CMC '04 and Janice Chou SC '03 expressed the sentiment that SAC "is essentially there to stall."

According to SAC chairwoman Jeanne Noda, the Council of Presidents has asked SAC to "fact find and determine a collective position," and then report back with recommendations in May.

Noda would only say that so far the meetings have been "very useful," and that she feels certain the deans will need to take all the time allotted to come to a decision.

Kim and Chou voiced frustration with SAC's approach in meetings so far. "Their continued emphasis was, 'we need to be cutting things, not doing new things,'" Kim said. "But at these colleges, claiming not to have money is another way of saying there's not the commitment."

But Quinley said as far as Pomona is concerned, the lack of commitment has nothing to do with financial reservations.

"It's not money," she explained. "I just plain don't want it. I feel that AARC is a very precious resource… We have a good thing going, and if other campuses want one, they can start their own."

AARC Dean Daren Mooko, however, repeatedly expressed the belief that a five-college AASC is necessary.

"For every need met and service provided by the AARC at Pomona, those same needs are present at the other Claremont Colleges," Mooko said. "We are a one-college department with a one-college budget and staff that cannot realistically be expected to operate on a five-college level. Because of that limitation… developing a sense of community within Asian-American/Pacific Islander constituencies across the colleges remains a nearly impossible task."

Mooko conceded that a 5-college AASC would mean the end of Pomona's AARC. He said a 5-C service would "theoretically" meet the needs of the Pomona community.

But Quinley expressed that in 5-C endeavors, the other colleges' gain is Pomona's loss.
"My better judgment sense is that this is not necessarily what is in Pomona students' interest," she said.

Kim pointed out that under the AASA proposal, each campus will retain its own sponsor program. She said administrators' unwillingness to jump on board mainly stems from their misplaced belief in model minority myths.

AASA members claim they spent considerable time over winter break assembling research packets in an attempt to debunk these myths.

"For example, the Asian-American female suicide rate is the highest in the 15- to 25-year-old age group," Chou said. "Most people don't know that."

What's more, Kim added, administrators are "burdening us with the work that they should be doing themselves to respond proactively to the needs of their students."

Quinley was unmoved by the research. "The issue is not whether a model minority myth exists in the world outside," she said. "That doesn't speak at all to what happens at the colleges."

Yet, in discussing the specific climate of Claremont, Kim and Chou repeatedly brought up "institutional racism." They described a pattern of silence and complained that administrators dragged their feet on this issue.

Pan-African Student Alliance (PASA) President Jennifer Jones concurred.

"I think there's been a lot of [administrative] stonewalling for quite some time," she said. "In a place where students are only here for four years, it's generally easy to draw out the process until organizers graduate."

PASA has thrown their full support behind the AASA proposal. Jones described the relationship between the two groups in positive terms.

"Asian students face a lot of the problems that black and Latino students at the colleges face," she said. "We think the model minority myth is coming into play here."

While Quinley suggested "we should figure out what the most important priority is here," and the official CUC response contrasted the proposed AASC's scope to "other ethnic student centers."

Jones rejected such comparisons. "I don't believe that there's a zero-sum game going on," she said. "The colleges have a plethora of resources to allocate."

AASA also received votes of support from faculty: Scripps Politics Professor Thomas Kim, Scripps English Professor Seung Hye Suh, CMC History Professor David Yoo, Pitzer History Professor Edith Kaneshiro, and Pitzer Professor Kathleen Yep all sent letters of support for the proposal.

Kim and Chou said the creation of the new center would benefit faculty as well as students. They claimed that faculty of color here in Claremont are forced to play "double roles," going above and beyond the call of duty to provide support for students of color. At Monsour Counseling Center, they said, there are no counselors who are trained in Asian-American issues, and only one who is of Asian-American ethnicity.

Support services for students of color shouldn't be "just about making sure your students graduate," Chou said. Both she and Kim stressed the importance of creating a support network for students of color.

Jones seemed to share this opinion. "The goal of 5-C minority groups tends to be to support each other," she said.

AASA's next step will be to conduct surveys at all five colleges to see how many students would currently support the creation of the AASC. Kim and Chou said they're taking this step because the deans asked them to provide "concrete evidence."

For all the work they're willing to put into this proposal, there is one thing AASA members say they are not willing to do: slash the price tag.

"We felt that [$750,000] was a minimum adequate budget," Kim explained. She said their feelings on this remained unchanged after SAC told them they were asking for what amounted to four times more than the OBSA and CLSA budgets.

Mooko said he believed the proposal was idealistic. But, he added, "I also believe it is completely warranted."

Warranted or not, Quinley doubted that the colleges would spend such a large amount of money. "I really don't believe that we will go forward with something of that magnitude," she said.