The Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community make up 29.5 percent of the student population, and UC Santa Cruz is home to AAPI students from a diverse array of backgrounds. AAPI students also constitute two of “the big five” organizations on campus — Bayanihan and the Asian and Pacific Islander Student Alliance (APISA).
As May and AAPI Heritage Month come to a close, reporters from City on a Hill Press asked UCSC students about the importance of celebrating their heritage and how their experiences define what it means to be AAPI.
Editor’s Note: Some responses have been edited for brevity or clarity.
Photo by Arzu Azeem
Aaliyah Balangue (she/her, global community health and feminist studies double major, fourth-year. Affiliated Organizations: Bayanihan, Kuya-Ate Mentorship Program (KAMP))
What is your ethnic identity?
- “I’m half Filipino and I’m also half Latina, specifically Nicaraguan.”
Why is AAPI month important to you?
- “I think it’s important to me, specifically, because I spent a lot of my childhood feeling very isolated from my Asian identity or Asian American identity. I’m multi-ethnic, so growing up, I didn’t really have a large Asian community around me besides my family. So, it’s nice to learn about my culture and also other AAPI cultures around me.”
Why is it important that AAPI month be celebrated on campus?
- “I’ve met a lot of people where we’ve shared the same sentiment of not feeling Asian enough or really feeling isolated on campus. I remember my first year I felt really sad, just because I missed home and I missed family. I wanted to have that community around me and didn’t really know where to look, until I joined KAMP. So, to have the AAPI identity celebrated on-campus is really exciting.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
Alyssa Vang (she/her, psychology major, fourth-year. Affiliated Organizations: Engaging Education (e2), APISA, Community Unified Student Network (CUSN), Bayanihan, Haluan, Student Union Governance Board (SUGB), Mobilizing Our Vote for Elections (M.O.V.E)
What is your ethnic identity?
- “Hmong, we’re an ethnic group from Laos. It was really hard when I was growing up just because a lot of our history is not very well known — even within our communities. But I know that we are a product of the Vietnam War, or what we call the Secret War, when we were impacted and became refugees in Thailand and eventually moved to places like America.”
Why is it important that AAPI month be celebrated on campus?
- “I think it’s really important. Especially because UCSC loves to pride itself on being diverse and I feel like if they’re going to advertise that in their pamphlets, then they should really show it through actions. And not just for AAPI students, but for our Latina students, our African, Black and Caribbean students, and our Indigenous Native American students.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
Aljon “Jiro” Claveria (he/him, biomolecular engineering and bioinformatics major, third-year. Affiliated Organizations: KAMP, e2, Student Union Assembly (SUA)
What is your ethnic identity?
- “I am Pilipinx and I came from the Philippines five years ago … I don’t identify as Filipino American, but I do find that work that I do aligns the most with Filipino Americans.”
Why is AAPI month important to you?
- “It’s really important for us to have that dedicated time, especially a dedicated month, to not only celebrate my culture, but also to celebrate with other cultures as well. It helps us engage with other cultures and it allows opportunities for cross-racial celebrations or even to highlight leaders that have already been doing work on campus.”
Why is it important that we celebrate AAPI month on campus?
- “I remember, during Cornucopia, I was waving around our Philippine flag and meeting a lot of people that way, and educating people about my culture is something that I really cherish. During that time too, I met the chancellor and, basically, we took a picture with the chancellor just [for fun], but the chancellor asked, ‘What flag is this?’ And so, I think it’s important that we celebrate AAPI month to kind of ensure that we get to have a designated time, a designated space on campus to highlight different cultures.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
Emily Tran (they/them, art game design and history double major, fourth-year. Affiliated Organizations: Game Design and Art Collaboration Club)
What is your ethnic identity?
- “I’m Vietnamese.”
Why is AAPI month important to you?
- “I just think it’s important to celebrate the rich and diverse culture of other Asian cultures. For me personally, I think AAPI month is a celebration of myself, my family, my family history, and my other friends who are also Asian. There’s also a history of hardships because we’re a minority group … so this month is a celebration and kind of a reflection of everything that makes me Asian and that makes my friends and family Asian.”
How do you express your cultural identity on-campus?
- “I was working on a project called the ‘Watermarks of the Last Chinatown,’ which was presented at the Museum of Art in downtown Santa Cruz. It’s an [Augmented Reality] experience about how downtown Santa Cruz used to be a Chinatown, but then there was a flood. I was on-boarded to the project and was thinking about how I expressed my cultural identity through my specialties and my projects and passion. I also got to work on graphics for a little dice game, which was a Vietnamese gambling game. I thought that was a really nice callback to my own culture.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
Stuthi Kandula (she/her, business economics and art double major, first-year. Affiliated Organizations: Matchbox Magazine, Eye Candy Film Journal)
What is your cultural background?
- “I am Indian. My family is from Andhra Pradesh, so we’re Telugu.”
Why is AAPI month important to you?
- “It is important because it acknowledges the contributions of Asian Americans in American history, and it celebrates Asian diaspora communities. It’s especially important for me to see AAPI month celebrated on campus to remind us of the role Asian students have played in shaping this campus and its community.”
How do you celebrate your cultural identity on campus?
- “When I try to stay connected to my culture on campus, I attend events like Diwali or Holi. Most recently, I attended the AAPI Night Market, which acknowledged South Asian culture in a really great way. I also went to Holi on campus with my friends. It was my first time celebrating in a few years and it reminded me how much I love it. My friends and I had a lot of fun and I loved the chance to share a part of my culture with them.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki.
Audrey Yu (she/her, psychology major, fourth-year. Affiliated Organizations: Chinese Student Association (CSA))
What is your cultural background?
- “I am Chinese American.”
Why is AAPI month important to you?
- “It’s important to highlight all the different cultures that Asia has to offer. A lot of people, when they hear Asia, they automatically think about East Asia. We’re not a monolith. We have so many different cultures. Growing up, I lived in Fremont, so there were a lot of Indian cultures. I learned a lot because of my community, but I know there’s other people who don’t have that opportunity. I think it’s important that we highlight different AAPI communities, because we don’t often hear about them, and it’s important to culturally diversify yourself.”
How do you participate in your culture on campus?
- “I like being active in CSA. It gives me a sense of community and connection. A lot of the students that joined were homesick or didn’t grow up in an environment where our culture was celebrated. It’s really important to me to be able to showcase our culture. CSA has a Lunar New Year banquet, KASA (Korean American Student Association) has their banquet, JSA (Japanese Student Association) has Matsuri, and ISA has Holi. We have so many different cultures on campus that it is just really important to celebrate and participate.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
Juno Kim (he/him, Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, second-year. Affiliated Organizations: Korean American Student Association (KASA))
What is your ethnic identity?
- “My ethnic identity is Korean.”
Why is it important that we celebrate AAPI month on-campus?
- “On-campus, especially for students, this is a very important time where we’re getting molded as human beings. In this sort of setting, it’s very important to diversify your perspective and be familiar with working with people with different backgrounds.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
John Conrad “JC” Toringan (he/him, Film and Digital Media and Education Double Major, second-year. Affiliated Organizations: Bayanihan, Kuya-Ate Mentorship Program (KAMP), People Power, Film Production Coalition (FPC), Eye Candy Film Journal)
What is your ethnic identity?
- “I have never done a genetic test, but I can tell you I was born in San Fernando in the Philippines. I immigrated here from the Philippines.”
How do you express your cultural identity on campus?
- “Honestly in the most candid way possible, I express my cultural identity by being alive. Dani [Dayao], who’s currently the co-chair of Bayanihan, said last year during her election, ‘To be brown and to be Filipino and to exist is automatically political.’ Existing as a brown man and walking around this predominantly white institution – I’m already expressing my cultural identity.”
Photo by Reggie Sasaki
Matthew Morimoto (he/him, politics major, second-year. Affiliated Organizations: APISA, e2, CUSN, SUA, Cowell College Senate)
What is your ethnic identity?
- “I was born and raised in Japan. My dad’s side of the family is Japanese
Why is it important that AAPI month be celebrated for you?
- “I was raised in Japan for the first 12 years of my life, and in Japan, almost everybody’s Japanese, right? So we don’t really have an AAPI month over there, and when I moved over to the United States in 2017, I found out AAPI month existed. It’s so important, especially in a country like the United States, where it’s a melting pot and there’s all kinds of different ethnicities and races coexisting. We really need to be able to celebrate and uplift each other’s voices, especially those who are [a part of] populations of color.”