“To ensure that our community embraces and supports individuals from all racial, ethnic, religious, gender, sexual orientation, class, disability, and nationality groups in their chosen pursuits.”

— A Cornell Diversity Goal

As Cornell students, we feel that the University must boost its efforts to support Asian and Asian American students, henceforth collectively called “Asian” due to limited space.

On a cold and rainy night this past Friday evening, members of the Board of Trustees, scurrying from dinner to a gala in Bailey Hall, were met with an unlikely greeting: peaceful, yet pronounced, student protest.

A self-described “coalition of students of color” staged the protest to shine light on what they consider to be a lack of administrative support for the needs of various minority communities on campus. Among these concerns were minimal financial resources for Asian and Asian-American students, neglect of student input in the decision to reassign Ujamaa Residential Housing Director Ken Glover and insufficient staffing at the Office of Minority Educational Affairs.

Asian and Asian-American students now have a center on campus solely dedicated to their needs, after a nearly decade-long fight to get the University to allocate more resources to the Asian community at Cornell.

Located in 208 Willard Straight Hall, the Asian/Asian-American Center (A3C) officially opened this semester, though the center is considerably smaller than proponents had originally sought.

Temporarily, the center consists of a single office space and one conference room located within the Office of Student Support and Diversity Education.

Although the center now has a physical center and a staff member, students and administrators said there is still much room for improvement.

It's been a rumblin’-tumblin’, rough and wild, but altogether HEROICALLY SA-WEET first week on the job down here at HEROES & VILLAINS. We’ve been on a HEROICALLY wild ride getting things in order and figuring out what the heck we’re supposed to do now that we’re in charge on the 127th. Scary, scary thoughts. Despite the ensuing misery, chaos and debauchery that is a — HEROIC? Naw, more like VILLAINOUS — Sun editorship, we’ve got the HEROIC Spring Break on the horizon and things couldn't look brighter.

To the Editor:

Re: “A3C: Benefits Do Not Outweigh the Costs,” Opinion, March 4

The author’s complaints about the A3C are so unoriginal that they’ve annoyed us students in support of A3C for ten years. (Calls for the center started in the years leading up to the Asian/Asian American Campus Climate Task Force report in 2004, and increased even more after.) Here, we dispel myths that members of our community, both Asian/Asian American (A3) and otherwise, continue to hold about A3C.

I first read about the proposed Cornell Asian/Asian American Center some time last semester. After months of research and discussion, I have yet to find a good reason for Cornell to fund it.

According to the A3C blog, (a3c-cornell.blogspot.com) the center aims to “provide university support for Asian and Asian American students and provide a space for community-building, cultural celebration and the development of an Asian/Asian American consciousness.” This confuses me. What is an “Asian/Asian American consciousness,” and what is the Asian community?