Another step has been completed: Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (APIA) have entered the arena of higher education and they are pursuing their dreams. But, where do we go from here? Many APIA's are unaware of the long history we have in this country and several APIA student organizations on college campuses nationwide are mostly social or cultural groups, not "political" ones. The 2002 Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE) Conference held from November 1 - November 3 at Columbia University addressed many of the issues facing APIAs today, including student struggles to build pan-Asian coalitions and also to create Asian American Studies majors at their respective schools.

During the workshop discussing the creation of an Asian American Studies major, the panelists from SUNY Buffalo talked about the great victory they won in establishing three Asian American Studies classes. However, these classes were not even classified as "Asian American Studies," but instead as "English" classes in order to attract more students to take them and possibly, in my opinion, to refrain from using the "R" word, race. The students who took the class did not know what to expect and were quite shocked to learn that APIAs have such a long history in this country. Personally, I did not feel that I actually learned anything from this conference. The workshops did not "teach" me anything new. They did, however, make me truly appreciative of my environment, my school and everything that it has to offer me.

That is not to say that I did not benefit at all from this conference. I left New York with a newfound inspiration to work even harder to continue building a more tightly knit coalition of APIAs and to continue attacking all the relative issues that affect us. I am also inspired to keep our Asian American Studies program as strong as ever, especially today when our university continues to cut our classes and our budget more and more every year. Although the West Coast schools already have Asian American Studies majors and pan-Asian coalitions, our work is nowhere near complete. Our main goal and challenge is to ensure that these things stay alive and do not get taken away from us. We need to reach out to the greater APIA community and make them see the importance of being involved, of being political, and of being heard. It is only with a strong, united voice that we can make our presence known.

Here are some events that AACP will soon be attending. Invite us to your events.

Date/Time	Event	Location
Feb. 1 8:30 am - 5:30 pm	Exploring Lessons Learned from the 1942 Internment of Japanese Americans	Vineyard Hills Community Clubhouse Fremont, CA
Feb. 5	3rd Annual Library Materials Fair	Santa Clara County Office of Education San Jose, CA
March 1-2	Reading the World V	USF San Francisco, CA
Other Event of Interest that AACP Will Not Attend
Jan. 26 - Feb. 16	SF Chinese New Year Parade and Festival	San Francisco, CA
Feb. 1 - 2	San Jose Tet Nguyen Dan Festival	Santa Clara County Fairgrounds 344 Tully Rd. San Jose, CA

You can contact us at -
aacpinc@asianamericanbooks.com