Due to the pandemic and the transition to online learning, we as an executive board entered the new semester with some doubts about how to create fun and engaging meetings while still following safety guidelines such as social distancing. These circumstances which we never experienced before really pushed us to think outside of the box while planning our meetings. While we were discouraged at first, we were able to come up with some amazing ideas, some of which we would never have experienced if we were not under the online environment. Zoom and Discord were two of the defining tools we used that brought this community closer together as we were required to stay apart. We hosted online game nights, including virtual 'Tien Len', a game we once played in person.
Instead of going on our typical restaurant trip, we chose to do Take-out Tuesday, where we picked up our food to go and safely ate outside as a group. This was one of the limited opportunities we had to meet with our members in person.
We also painted some beautiful waterfalls at our online paint night!
Very surprisingly, considering we were in the midst of a pandemic, our annual 865 Night Market was a huge success!! While smaller than previous years, our Night Market committee worked incredibly hard this year to put on a fun night of cultural foods, activities, and entertainment. The turn out was comparable to last year's and the experience was definitely one for the books! The AAPI organizations on campus also came together and raised over $4000 for the Asian American Advancing Justice-ATL, a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and advancing the rights of Asian Americans in the Southeast. This donation was prompted due to the rise in Asian hate crimes across the country, which were linked to the racist rhetoric that that Asians are the cause of the spread of Covid.
As we strive to promote and discuss Asian American issues, we organized a #StopAsianHate discussion event in collaboration with several other AAPI organizations on campus, such as FSA, CCC, SASE, VSA, etc. In this discussion, we really broke down the history of anti-Asian racism in America and how Covid and other factors have been influencing the recent crimes. Additionally, we also participated in our first ever out of state collaboration event with other universities around the nation including MSU, Drexel, and Temple! In this discussion, we talked about being "Unapologetically Asian" and what that means to us. This event also included Asian American history, representation in Media and so much more. Even though collaborating with other universities through Zoom was something we never planned on doing before the pandemic, this new experience showed us how easy online collaborations are to connect with other universities! We hope that we can continue this collaboration style in future events!
Lastly, we also virtually met Steven Lim as he discussed his journey as an Asian American content creator!! Steven Lim is the cofounder of Watcher Entertainment and the creator and host of Buzzfeed's biggest food show "Worth It"! It was honestly so crazy hearing about and and actually be able to relate to his problems with the lack of Asian American representation in media growing up. It was such a pleasure meeting him, and although the Eboard wasn't able to meet up with him to get boba tea the experience was still very much "worth it".
As you can see, this year was crazy eventful despite the conditions we were in. We're very grateful for the new opportunities we got to experience this year, and hopefully next semester's will be even better!
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