In late May, the Asian Student Association, then just a club, was working towards becoming an official program at Bellevue College. Now, almost two months later, their goal has been achieved.
By becoming a program, the Asian Student Association was renamed the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association in order to include all Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at BC, said Kevin Wu, president of the program.
The Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association first attempted to become a program because they knew it would help the mission of the club by providing access to more resources, people and funds to help bring about activities and events to sponsor. Unfortunately, the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association doesn’t have a budget this year, so they are focusing on building up the program with the hope of receiving a budget for next year.
“We have to recruit our new members, find a new advisor to support us in this new program and we are doing our best to reach out and receive more support from staff and professors,” said Wu, regarding all of the tasks that they have yet to accomplish
Now that the club’s goal of becoming a program has been accomplished, a new set of goals is already set for the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association team to get started on.
“When we were ASA, our main goal was to share the culture with the BC campus. Now that we are a program, we are aiming for more specific goals such as helping those students who come directly to BC from Asian countries,” said Yukimi Mizuno, student director of the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association.
With fall quarter approaching, the program is in the midst of figuring out what they’re going to do for the academic year. One event they have in mind is to have all Asian and Pacific Islander cultures come together to share their culture and get to know each other. In addition, they hope to have professors who teach about Asian cultures to come speak at the event, said Mizuno.
With the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association now present as a program on the BC campus, the main hope is that it gets stronger.
“The biggest thing is we will get more and more Asian students involved on campus and that’ll become stronger since we are a program. We want Asian and Pacific Islander students to become more visible on campus,” said Mizuno.
“Our mission for the academic year is to build a friendship with the Asian and Pacific Islander students here at BC, as well as break any barriers or negative views that are on those students,” said Wu.
Since the Asian-Pacific Islander Student Association is a brand new program, they are approaching the process of looking for many new members. If you are interested, make sure to pick up an application and apply to become a part of the program. Applications will be available in Student Programs at the beginning of fall quarter.