Open Forum
Wednesday, October 15, 2016
List of topics to discuss
Feel free to add to the list or bring up other topics during the meeting.
List of topics to discuss
Feel free to add to the list or bring up other topics during the meeting.
- Inclusivity
- As a broad term, can we clarify what it means to us?
- How can we strive to be more inclusive?
- Poor South Asian, Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander representation - is this something we want to rectify (and how)?
- South Asian students might already have their own stuff going on. Tried to reach out before but the cultural rhetoric is different.
- Historically, AASA has been East Asian-centered. How can we fundamentally change what we are centered around
- Co-sponsor an event
- Include issues that are somewhat less relevant to just East Asian. Make it more relevant with all Asians including South Asians. Putting responsibility on us to reach out
- In the broader community, outside Brown, Asian American already is associated with East Asians. Do South Asian students consider themselves Asian-Americans. The answer may not be yes.
- EBoard representation - perhaps a liaison to South Asian students community
- Careful about tokenizing the only SA student on Eboard
- Afra Rahman
- Stay away from model minority because it focuses on people who are more upper middle class, light skin, etc
- Keep a Google Doc list of topics we need to be conscious about bringing up to promote inclusivity
- Reach out to students with mixed Asian American identity
- Think about organizations and the individuals who constitute, rather than just thinking about the name. Build personal relationships with individual people because they’re the ones who bring something up during the meetings. Organizations aren’t static.
- What is most important to other people especially what is going on now (such as immigration, Islamophobia, class status, skin color, etc). Not just focus on model minority
- Tea talks and sponsoring workshops on Islamophobia or other topics that are inclusive to more people. Conversations about media rep and mm, we can reframe it to make it more inclusive
- For example, mm stereotype hurts those who are mm, but other Asians who are not that “East Asian” or “smart” may be hurt more
- Recenter the conversation on people outside mm
- Non EA minorities in media rep eg
- We don’t need to expect SASA to want us to join them in activities, but we need to give them the option, and expect them to be open-minded too
- Start out with reaching to Freshman, dorm activities, mental health workshop
- Faculty involvement in events
- Co-sponsoring events (money)
- Widening our focus to a more variety of events
- Reaching out to SASA
- Joint position between SASA
- Reaching out to Afra
- Change within ourselves
- Reaching out to MASH
- Focusing on the People / focusing on the
- Google Docs about a list of things / topics we’ve been more conscious about
- Are there any Central Asian groups / students at Brown we haven’t reached out to?
- GB Involvement
- Felt like there’s a big divide between GB and Eboard
- Stress the ways the GB can get involved
- Ideas
- Make public our meeting notes and agendas
- Polls, being more interactive with social media
- Publicity: GB doesn’t know what we do / Advertising for events / Posting on the AASA page isn’t enough
- Move Asian Arts festival up, not in the late spring
- Maybe have smaller scale social events; not like Gala - too much planning and only last one night
- Documentaries
- GB involvement feels necessary in order for us to maximize our service to the clubs’ constituents
- How can we increase GB access to our events and resources?
- Publicity?
- Target audience?
- More GB meetings?
- Making people feel like what they can do in fruition
- Organizational Focus
- Are we still an umbrella organization?
- Is it unrealistic / suboptimal to strive to serve the entire AAPI community at Brown? Do we have a target audience / if so, should we be doing things differently in terms of reaching out to this target audience?