EDITORIAL: A place to call their own

Like other minority groups on campus, Asian Americans have a legitimate claim to a resource center of their own. In the midst of the annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Week, new calls have gone up in support of an old idea: creating an Asian-American Resource Center on Penn's campus along the lines of the African-American Resource Center and the recently opened La Casa Latina. And we believe that the time has come for Asian Americans on campus to have a place they can call their own, too. While the University prides itself on its level of diversity, it also must recognize that minority students can best be recruited and retained by providing for their academic and cultural needs. Some would say that Asian Americans -- who comprise approximately 20 percent of the undergraduate population -- hardly constitute an "underrepresented" minority at the University. But from the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent to the Far East, students of Asian descent represent a wide array of different heritages, and their need for mentoring and advising are no less than that of other communities. The facility would also serve the valuale purposes of providing additional meeting space for student groups and giving the large Asian-American community a spot on campus with which to identify -- just as the much-smaller Latino student population has taken to frequent use of La Casa Latina for social and cultural events. Furthermore, we find Provost Robert Barchi's excuse that "serious space constraints on campus" prevent the University from allocating space for a center to be unsatisfying. Officials have had little difficulty in the recent past quickly identifying spaces for homeless administrative offices, academic programs and student groups, and with the University's current expansion to the north and east, we would be disappointed should space not be identified soon for an Asian-American Resource Center. In the past, we have noted that the University has created "centers" on campus for different groups, but failed to make students aware of the resources available to them. But with such a large Asian-American population at Penn -- and such vocal support for this proposal -- we trust that the University will act with all due speed to fill the void created by the lack of an Asian-American Resource Center on campus.