Elizabeth deBrabander/THE REVIEW
The Asian & Pacific Islander Student Association (APSA) held its annual I AM conference as an East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) Campus Summit.
BY
Managing News Editor
On Sept. 28, the Asian & Pacific Islander Student Association (APSA) held its annual I AM conference as an East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) Campus Summit. This year the group chose to focus on mental health in higher education. APSA Vice President Joe Kim explained why the organization found it necessary to discuss mental health during this year’s conference.
“I think in particular, mental health is always a conversation that we need to have obviously for everyone, but specifically with Asian American culture and society, we always have to handle and deal with and think about the rate at which we sacrifice our lives for education, or our lives for legacy, or this concept of legacy,” Kim said.
A prevalent theme of the conference was the struggle to balance the mental health of the individual while still meeting the expectations of the Asian group mentality.
“There’s already a culture clash in how we take care of ourselves and take care of our communities,” Kim said. “Asians inherently take care of our communities. Americans are individualistic. So how do we balance both of these?”
Tiffany Wang, a representative of the ECAASU, discussed this topic during a workshop that she led — linking individualized self-care to the benefit of communities.
“When we’re not taking care of our own mental health, how can we even start thinking about helping other people when we’re not in a good place ourselves?” Wang said. “ Like I give good advice that I never follow for myself. And that’s just not great.”
Zainab Shah, program coordinator for victim advocacy at the university, would continue to expand on this topic of Asians experiencing situations as a group.
Shah said that the issues that the majority of Asian Americans face can be considered community trauma. When dealing with collective trauma, it can hinder an individual’s ability to care for one’s self.
“So when you’re constantly dealing with this burnout of dealing with all of this trauma that you face in your community, that’s something that can really affect your ability to do self-care,” Shah said.
Students were able to share their own experiences being Asian American, their journey towards self-acceptance, as well as the factors they believed impacted their mental health.
“Shame in terms of deeply ingrained conflicts with self-care, shame in terms of being Asian, shame of regarding quote-unquote ‘indulgence’ with something selfish,” Kim said. “Lots of shame. I feel like we all have this common ground of feeling guilty about taking a break.”
Angela Yu, a student at the university and a member of APSA, shared her personal feelings towards being Asian.
“Even last year, I was so, so embarrassed. I think I hated being Asian,” Yu said. “ And it’s still a fear that I have deep down, which really sucks. But that’s something I’m working on.”
She continued to detail her journey to accept its impact on her mental health.
“I want to be a part of my community and actually contribute and learn more and be a good ally and do the things I need to do. And it’s also neat taking care of myself ’cause I’m starting to embrace identities more,” Yu said.
