by Shelley Robeniol

On February 15^th and 16^th, thousands of college students from the East coast attended the 2008 Asian American Students United conference hosted by Cornell University. The theme for this year's conference was "Push Forward: Reflection. Progress. Opportunities." 

For two days students had a plethora of informative workshops to choose from. Many of those workshops addressed issues such as stereotypes, prejudice, immigration, health, veterans' benefits, and student activism, to name a few. The purpose of the workshops was not only to educate but also to inspire change in thinking, speaking, and acting.

Students also had the opportunity to hear from keynote speakers such as Jeff Chang, author of Can't Stop Won't Stop," Yul Kwon, winner of "Survivor," and Becky Lee, who was also a star of "Survivor," a successful lawyer, and the founder of a non-profit organization against domestic violence. Each speaker gave insight from his or her own life experience and motivated the students to continue to push forward by learning from the past and present in hopes of bringing a better tomorrow.

Luis Salazar, one of the AA E-Zine editors, attended and felt he learned some valuable insights. "ECAASU helped me to better understand my Asian identity and informed me a lot about the injustices going on within the Asian community. It made me realize that as an Asian American, it is important that we break out of our stereotypes and not be satisfied with the public's portrayal of a typical Asian."

For entertainment, musical guests such as Blue Scholars, D'Lo, and Ill-Literacy not only showed off their talents on the stage, but also shared their message. The weekend ended with a dinner banquet and after party. 

All in all, the 2008 ECAASU conference was a huge success and proved to be both an event worth attending and waiting for.

And after coming back to SBU, ASA did a 'think global, act local' workshop with enthusiastic participation from the ECAASU attendees. What happened at that workshop is next in this week's E-Zine series, named appropriately for that workshop, 'What does it mean to be Asian American?'. 

 

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