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| Catherine | Luming |
The Special Events Co-Coordinators, Catherine Chen (PC '13) and Luming Chen (PC '14), work to organize larger events on campus, bringing together participants from the Asian American community both at Yale and beyond New Haven.
The annual arts festival features work from both students as well as professional visual and performing artists. This year, we decided to focus on comedy as a way to explore the Asian American experience. We called the festival Laugh Out Loud this year and it was held on February 24th, 2012. LOL featured two professional stand-up comedians, Ron Josol and Vidur Kapur, and four student openers whose talents ranged from piano to “fingerstyle” guitar to Rubik’s cube solving tricks.
The AACC Jam, held this year on November 11th, 2011, is a showcase of all the performance groups affiliated with the Asian American Cultural Center. The showcase included dancing, singing, instrumental pieces, and performance martial arts demonstrations. Anjali, the Raga Society, Yale Bhangra, Phoenix Dance Troupe, KASAMA, Sur et Veritaal, Unity, and Wushu all performed. A delicious mochi mixer in the Stiles common room for the performers followed the performance.
Students met over dinner to discuss the purpose of the Asian American community at Yale and what it’s future goals should be. Using the Asian American Students’ Alliance blog post “Will the Asian American Community Please Speak Up?” as a jumping off point, students discussed whether or not Asian Americans should shift their attention from social and cultural events to focus on more political issues. Students considered questions about whether the student groups do a good job of reaching out to students new to the community, whether the Asian American community does enough to address the divisions between the various Asian American ethnic groups, and whether or not the Asian American community is inclusive in general.
