As the semester begins to wind down, the new executive board of the Asian Pacific Student Coalition is gearing up to tackle another year of issues facing Penn's Asian Pacific-American community.
Eugena Oh will head the entirely new eight-person executive board, elected last night, for the 2002 calendar year. The presidents of each of the APSC's 17 constituent groups gathered in the ARCH to elect the board from a group of 11 bright-eyed candidates.
The APSC functions as an umbrella organization for 17 of Penn's Asian and Pacific Island student groups. Facilitating coalitions between the various groups, the APSC has addressed political and cultural issues both on and off campus.
In her election speech, Oh stressed the importance of the year-old Pan-Asian American Community House to Asian students on campus.
"One of my visions for APSC is to really get them to utilize PAACH as a resource," Oh said, stressing that increased student usage of the center could prompt the University to give Asian and other minority student groups more funding.
The position of vice chair was filled by College sophomore Corinna Panlilio, who came to Penn after living in six Asian countries.
Panlilio stressed the APSC's responsibility to "enact change in our community," highlighting problems like self-segregation and a lack of representation of Asian Americans.
"We have a lot of problems and a lot to work on," Panlilio said. "I believe that we have suffered in the shadows too long."
Throughout the election process, students raised issues important to their respective groups. Among the issues were the APSC's involvement in supporting the South Asian Regional Studies Department and increasing the number of Asian/Pacific American faculty.
Clarence Tong, who was elected vice chairman of political affairs, discussed issues facing the broader Asian-American community, such as the disproportionately large number of deaths among Asian Americans due to breast cancer and Hepatitis B.
Also present at last night's election was a representative from the APSC's newest constituent group, the Penn Hawaii Club, which joined the coalition last month.
In the last decade, the Hawaii Club has focused primarily on acclimating Hawaiian freshmen to a non-exotic life on the East Coast. President Tiffany Fujioka said that becoming part of the APSC emerged from the club's desire to broaden its horizons.
"Because one of our functions is to be a support group for the freshmen, we tend to just focus on that, and not the other half of our mission which is to spread awareness of Hawaiian culture," Fujioka said.
Outgoing APSC chairwoman Olivia Chung commented on the role the Hawaii Club will play in the APSC in the upcoming year.
Also last night, Julia Lee was voted vice chairwoman of cultural affairs and Winnie Ping was voted vice chairwoman of community affairs. The group elected Gizelle Gopez as vice chairwoman of communications and Diann Hseuh as vice chairwoman of executive outreach. Ray Liu will be the group's new treasurer.
