Student-Initiated Conferences: A Phenomenon of Asian American Student Agency and Community Leadership

• In Event: Listening to All Voices: The Experiences of Asian Americans

Abstract

This project seeks to better understand student-initiated and student-led, racial and ethnic identity-based student conferences as phenomena of student leadership, agency, and resistance to racism and racial isolation. Specifically, the study focuses on the Midwest Asian American Students Union (MAASU) as a product of racialized Asian American college student experiences and transformative agency. An intercollegiate organization that students founded in 1989, MAASU emerged out of Asian American student community development and organizing efforts to address their unique interests and challenges. MAASU receives no permanent institutional funding or support. Yet, each year its conferences draw nearly one thousand participants from across the Midwest region, a geographic locale not well-known for a large Asian American population.

Authors

• OiYan A. Poon, Loyola University Chicago

• Lester Manzano, Loyola University Chicago

• Sara Furr, Loyola University Chicago

• Corinne Maekawa Kodama, Loyola University Chicago