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UVSA Northern California


Last Updated: 7/27/2009

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008 

Category: Blogging
At the Vietnamese Spring Festival & Parade, the day opened to a beautiful morning, a good thing for the girls wearing colorful áo dài and sporting fans, parasols, and the like; unlike past years when wind chill factors tended to add goosebumps to the girls. Hundreds of 'Little Saigon' proponents from the San Jose Voters for Democracy walked in unison, with half the City Council not showing up to the parade as they usually do every year, for fear their presence would disrupt the procession and spirit of the holiday, even though reconciliation among family and friends is part of the holiday's custom.

But in our corner of the world, in the eyes of the youth, another form of unison occurred, with this year demarcating the third year in which the UVSA has participated in the parade. In the years 2003 and 2004, UVSA was a coalition of high school VSAs, not a collegiate VSAs. This year, 2008, marks the first time we marched as a coalition of collegiate VSAs. Priscilla Luong of UC Davis VSA and Cong Nguyen of De Anza College VSA spearheaded the effort, bringing in participants from 8 schools:

  * California State University, East Bay
  * De Anza College
  * Mission College
  * San Francisco State University
  * San Jose State University
  * University of California, Berkeley
  * University of California, Davis
  * University of the Pacific



Our unit had a Acura RSX decorated like a rat, which enjoyed numerous compliments for its ingenuity, cuteness and playing off the theme of this year, being the Year of the Rat. There were also guys and girls dressed in Vietnamese high school uniform: white ao dai for the ladies, and white dress shirt over black slacks for the gentlemen. Some of the gentlemen rode around on bikes, while the ladies sported baskets and tossed out rabbit candy and fliers for the "Pencil Me In" charity campaign that is being organized by the Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations (uNAVSA).



We met up with Evergreen Valley College VSA and UC Santa Cruz VSA with the hopes that they might join UVSA in the future. And unfortunately San Joaquin Delta College VSA was unable to turn out representatives because of simultaneous festivals occurring in Stockton. Turn out from UC Davis was also low for the same reason: there was a festival going on in Sacramento the same weekend. One might lament that Tet could very well divide the VSAs because of multiple celebrations across the region on the same weekend, and it will continue to be a challenge in the future to stay united during these times. We still hope that the different regions move their festivals to different weekends, but that falls upon the festival organizers for each city to communicate and coordinate with one another, and we don't know if they talk to one another.

Multiple VSAs had their own units as well, so when UVSA was done, a few rushed back to the end of the procession to get into their school's unit. And there was a lot of Vietnamese students who carried the large yellow flag at the beginning of the parade. One of our staff members, Lily Tran, who works with the high school VSAs, came out to inspire the crowd as Miss Congeniality of the Miss Vietnam of Northern California 2008 Pageant Court. You can check out photos from the festival at Andre's site: (http://andresphotos.smugmug.com/gallery/4330731_7qrvq)

During the evening, a few of us went to CSUEB VSA's "Bella Luna" Valentine's Dance (or otherwise known as the Tet afterparty!), and we rocked in our socks to good food and company. So many thanks to CSUEB VSA for providing a free event (admission, food, and parking was free) which was largely enjoyable. Them CSUEB folks are really down-to-earth. We gave them Valentine's cards to show our love for the VSA.

The next day the Executive Committee crawled out of bed trying to get to school or work with an exhaustion of a long week of serial Tet celebrations, while other VSA members had to cram for midterms, or even continue to celebrate Tet in other cities. But the Executive Committee was far from done. We had to focus on the next event at hand: The UVSA Olympics.

The first annual UVSA Olympics will be held at Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park at San Francisco on Saturday, March 15, 2008, lasting from the morning until late afternoon. We haven't finalized the programming quite yet (we're almost done), but our 9 affiliated VSAs will be competing for the Trophy and the winning school will have their school's name inscribed on a nameplate for that year. There is room for a nameplate for each year for the next decade, so we're beginning a tradition to bring out the spirit of friendly competition. What I can say is this: every school needs to bring out their members in droves wearing their school or VSA t-shirt, and have a short performance ready for roll call in the beginning. Check out the example of the roll call for SFSU at the Friendship Games that is organized by the Filipino-American student associations (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6H_sx0JK5k). In fact, the Friendship Games really inspired us to organize a games for our VSA to bring out the spirit of youths. While the Friendship Games is in their 23rd year turning out 7,000 students from across the nation, UVSA can only plant the seed today and hope the passion of our future leaders can take it to the next level.

The following day, on March 16, the Immigrant Resettlement & Cultural Center (IRCC) is hosting a culture show with a 1,000 seating capacity. They hope to see students from many colleges and universities in Northern California come out and bring out the spirit of the youth. We're still working with them to see what it would take to bring the students out again the day after the Olympics, and in much larger numbers. But one thing that intrigued us is that because the IRCC concentrates on the preservation of our community's history, they want each VSA to compile photos of their activities of today, and they will combine it with photos of what the Vietnamese youths were doing at the same universities decades ago. And there's also a chance that they'll invite alumni from various schools and give every VSA a chance to connect with their alumni and see what leadership roles they take on today. Sounds pretty awesome!

Meanwhile, Cal VSA (UC Berkeley) is planning to organize a symposium on two important issues facing our community: the PRC's infringement on Vietnamese sovereignty over Hoàng Sa & Truong Sa (Paracel & Spratly Islands) and the resulting Vietnamese anti-PRC movement; and the Deportation Agreement between Homeland Security and the Vietnamese government. UVSA will be releasing a statement on the Hoàng Sa & Truong Sa issue later, but we do wish to bring these issues to light, as these developments have occurred within the past few months.

Never a dull moment at our virtual office (yeah, we don't have real office space yet). We wish everyone a "Chuc Mùng Nam Moi" with a year filled with success, good grades, and an unwavering optimism that infects everything you do in life! :-)
7:35 AM 
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Saturday, February 02, 2008 

Category: Blogging

We drove up to UC Davis for our ICC meeting, in a snowball carpooling style. Those of us in San Jose went to pick up fellow VSAers at Berkeley and San Leandro. Maybe if we had more drivers, go pick up the people in Stockton too! Because of traffic, we still arrived late to the meeting, having left around 3:00pm and arriving around 7:00pm, but we bumped into UC Davis VSA rep Priscilla, where we helped her bring in the Hawaiian barbeque foods, yum! Cal VSA rep Ali was sick (I hope she gets better soon). Well the meeting went until close to midnight, mainly because we had to start delving into important issues that we couldn't cover last week (and normally we only have once-a-month meetings), not to mention that Tet is around the corner.

The crucial problem we face now is that there has been several important issues where we as UVSA have been asked to take action. With the recent Youth Forum that we organized in order to listen to youths and their views on the whole issue of the Vietnamese Naming of Story Road in San Jose, we got a few compliments on how this was such a crucial space. Most rallies organized by the Vietnamese community tend to be Vietnamese-language dominated, and so is not very conducive for youths to understand what is going on, much less speak their minds on it.

However, we did receive an email from a man who dissected our mission statement and questioned our motives regarding the Youth Forum. There were allegations of being against the community, because apparently holding a forum separate from the main Vietnamese community's rallies is seen as opposing the will of the Vietnamese community. Basically if you're not with us, you're against us. Strike one. Second, he alleges that we should focus on understanding the issues and study leadership, because we're essentially too young and naive, and incapable of forming a coherent opinion. "Have you seen any 20 year old leader?" he asks. Strike two. Finally he points out in our mission statement that we are committed to community service, but asks, "What have you done to serve the community?" Hmm. Does he not know what VSAs do? "Or are you a bunch of students who are sitting around deciding to jump into something without thinking?" Oh, no you did not just say that! Strike three. The letter is actually nastier in Vietnamese than how I describe it.

With our credibility questioned, another problem that was brought up was how to go about engaging in important issues in the community, such as the protests over China's unilateral takeover of the Paracel/Spratley Islands, which Vietnam claims ownership of (in addition to other countries). Then there is the recent Vietnamese deportation issue in which there was a signed memo between American immigration officials and Vietnam. The question now is whether UVSA should become more of an advocacy group than simply a network of youths. I usually hate reinventing the wheel, so the question I always ask "Are there other groups who can already fulfill that role?" Honestly, if you're talking about advocacy groups that cater to Vietnamese youths in the Northern California region, the answer is not really. Although there are Asian American youth advocacy groups, or ones focused on Vietnamese health, there are issues that are unique to the Vietnamese community because of our ongoing contention between Vietnamese Diaspora and the Vietnamese Communist Party, the theme that drives much of the discourse and actions of the Vietnamese American community. This was something that was brought up at the uNAVSA retreat (uNAVSA is the Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations). If we want to even consider getting a piece of pie in the affairs of our community, we need to be able to understand the implications of every action we do, otherwise people like that Youth Forum critic will label us as ignorant, naive, and rebellious.

When I drive home and took Cal VSA reps Lan and Ali home (Ali was sleeping, bless her health), I told Lan, "You know the funny thing is? All I ever wanted to do was take pictures. I don't know how I got wrapped up into all of these leadership stuff." I suppose that when I took photos, all too often I saw frustrations, and I felt compelled to look for ways to reduce the burden and pain of my friends. This drive to serve my friends is what pushed me to learn more and more about leadership in order to make the most of our actions with extremely limited resources, and working with youths who are still learning about not only their heritage, but also themselves. For this you have to have creativity, innovation, commitment, and lots of patience, love, and passion.

I told Tu-Anh, SJSU VSA rep, and now just recently chosen to represent Northern California at uNAVSA, "VSA is our life!" even though she asked me not to say that, in jest. The Executive Committee want to plan another retreat, one focused on really getting to know one another so that we can define the values and mission of UVSA. Basically, where do we want to take UVSA? If we had a high school student write to us asking us to "do something", can we ignore that? I don't think our conscience could. The real problem, though, is how to get more youths to take initiative. When we went around the table looking for new reps for uNAVSA, many people had to decline, either because our schedules were killing us already, or there were leaders still focusing on developing their school or themselves. And not to mention, if you're a Vietnamese woman from a traditional (or maybe just overprotective) family, you're usually on house arrest. Heaven forbid you go out and do community service! (Yes, some of us are in VSA against our parents' will. Shhhh...)

The growing pains that we go through to build UVSA, I see the weariness in their eyes, the need for more people to step up. I want to tell them that, there are already people who do step up, but lack the passion and conviction to make themselves known. Without consistent communication among these youths, there is always a risk to put too many things on everyone's plate. Coordination has to work like cells in a human body. A cell on its own does a very simple task. But as a collective, the human body can do really amazing things. Speaking of which, on a related topic, we hope to see evidence of people doing amazing things at our upcoming UVSA Olympics (the name hasn't been settled yet) in March.

With Tet around the corner, let this be the start of a beautiful year, with a new beginning for UVSA.

11:00 PM 
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Monday, January 14, 2008 

Category: School, College, Greek
This past weekend there was the first ever "National" Southeast Asian Intercollegiate Summit held at UC Berkeley. I put "national" in quotes because although the aim was to bring in students from across the nation, it was recognized that Southeast Asian collectives/coalitions is a very recent phenomenon found mainly in California. The existence of such a political identity comes from two important reasons: (1) the efforts to disaggregate the Asian Pacific American identity in order to better reflect the diverse heritages and circumstances of the entire Asian continent ( e.g. Pacific Islander, South Asian, Southeast Asian, East Asian); (2) that what constitutes a point of congruence for Southeast Asians is the Vietnam War (or Second Indochina War to put it more encompassingly) and the refugee and recent immigration experiences. We recognize the three main nationalities of Cambodian (Khmer), Laotian (Hmong), and Vietnamese, but I believe there are other ethnic groups to consider in the near future (such as displaced Teochew).

The attendants consisted of students mostly from Khmer Student Associations, LASR (Laotian American Student Representatives), and Vietnamese Student Associations, as well as guest speakers from various nonprofits. I came to the conference to represent UVSA Northern California, and to a lesser extent uNAVSA because of coinciding scope. By the way, Khmer is pronounced "kuh-MAI". Upon registration, every attendant was given a portfolio rich with information (including contacts of all speakers and attendees, the names of the attendees and their assigned discussion group, biographies of organizers and speakers, panelist's handouts, etc.)

The program stretched over two days. The four plenary sessions (2 on each day) had 4 panelists each, each one given 12 minutes to talk about their experiences as organizers and the kinds of issues their work attempts to resolve. Such work covered topics such as gender and sexuality, youth incarceration, occupational glass ceiling, model minority myth, sex trafficking, etc. The target audience of the conference were students who already had an understanding the issues, an important reason which I will explain later. Between plenary sessions were 15 minute regional caucuses (which only seemed effective for people who don't know the other people in their region already), and the group discussions. The group discussions, I could tell were run on a variation of the Open Space Technology format. There were three rooms representing three broad themes: Economic Inequality; Social Injustice; and Political Underrepesentation.

The group discussion was broken into three parts, 1.5 hours each.

The first part was icebreakers for getting to know everyone in your room. The room was divided into four smaller groups and work began listing topics that related to the broad theme. As in the case of Economic Inequality, topics included lack of affordable housing; barriers to upward mobility (such as language, education, etc.); Southeast Asian underrepresentation in higher education; institutionalized economic racism; and human trafficking, just to name a few.

The second part of the group discussion focused on mapping out our personal experiences. How does your personal experience relate to the topics mentioned above? For example, in terms of human trafficking, I've been an advocate on the issue through my work in UVSA and uNAVSA; I've worked with Khoa Nguyen, a staffmember of San Jose City Major Chuck Reed, in holding a Vietnamese public forum on affordable healthcare; etc. Everytime a topic was mentioned as a personal experience, a tally mark was put next to the topic. This straw hat kind of "vote" helped determine the top four topics that students had the most experience to bring to the table. When asked whether their organizations have organized around issues, I brought up my impression on VSAs, "Most VSAs are really rallying points for cultural education. Advocacy work is not their bread and butter. For those that do do consistent advocacy work, they often form groups outside of the VSA, which is fine, because VSA acts as a space for discussion. Politics and advocacy can be organized in a separate group, which I see a lot of."

The third part of the group discussion identifies the top four topics under each theme, and the groups then go to work to brainstorm a solution. Prior to this third part, there was a workshop on "Creating Strategies". A template for creating a strategy was provided in the portfolio, and so the speaker explained how to implement the chart. The chart helped organize our thoughts into an Action Plan. From this fruitful discussion, 12 action plans were created.

At the end of the day, the entire attendance reconvened and the 12 action plans were presented, including a recommendation for creating a Southeast Asian scholarship; developing a community resource directory; expanding the summit into a conference; organizing an access to higher education campaign; creating a network for queer (LGBT) Southeast Asian Americans; just to name a few. Every Action Plan was photocopied so that everyone had a copy of it. Students started taking initiative to get mailing list signups to maintain communication following the summit.

Because I was in the discussion room with the organizers on planning the next summit, we agreed that there had to be another summit, and we are looking to explore Southern California as the next location. My personal hope is that the next summit will give us a chance to reflect on any of the Action Plans that was created and how well the students took the idea and ran with it. A separate discussion group independently recommended that the summit encompass a "our progress" portion to the summit, which made me smile thinking "Man, great minds do think alike."

Friday night was dinner, held in a classroom, a cheap and casual affair, but a way to unwind after a long day of intense thinking and discussion. The dinner was followed by Open Mic, a chance for people to signup and make a presentation, whether it was singing a capella, break dancing solo, spoken word poetry (or simply poetry recital), or playing your guitar, etc. I suppose it's one thing to see entertainers perform for a crowd, but I personally felt something different, because I knew the performers not just by their talent, but by their experiences as community organizers or instigators that we talked about earlier in the day.

On an ending note, I have to say this summit was refreshing, because they've employed a new format (I should say new for students) which allowed the students to construct the agenda and activities of the group (it's not an organization… yet). Their portfolio contained a good amount of information that allowed for successful follow-ups. It wasn't a perfect summit, as there's always room for improvement, but for something that the organizers created really as an experiment to explore the ideas and resources "out there", it has and will continue to take a life of its own.
6:59 AM 
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007 

Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
On September 28, 2007 at the University of California, Berkeley, more than 60 students hailing from the VSAs of 8 schools participated at the UVSA (Northern California) Summit, in order to plant the seeds for a great regional network of Vietnamese youths. Over the three days the delegates forged friendships, shared experiences, and began the process of formalizing relationships. Three important things were established out of this summit: The Constitution; the Intercollegiate Council (ICC); and the Roadmap.

CONSTITUTION

The Constitution is the cornerstone for the organization, and delegates hammered out some of the details that defined the relationship among the VSAs as well as the UVSA legal/financial entity. Most important was formation of the Intercollegiate Council that consists of representatives of each VSA, whose responsibility is to determine the policies of UVSA, and is given the power to appoint staff for united VSA activities. In the coming weeks, the ICC will decide on election for the Executive Board who is responsible for maintaining the legal and fiscal health of the organization, as well as to give guidance and support to the VSAs.

INTERCOLLEGIATE COUNCIL

We'd like to congratulate the new Intercollegiate Council for the 2007-2008 year.

De Anza College - Anh Tran
San Joaquin Delta College - Weison Chen
San Jose State University - Tu-Anh Dang
University of California, Berkeley - Lan Doan; Ali Nguyen
University of California, Davis - Priscilla Luong; Hoa Phan
University of the Pacific - Hien Tran

UVSA ROADMAP

http://i.norcaluvsa.org/summit/2007_fall/events_idea_list

The Roadmap was determined from a large list of ideas. Every delegate was given the chance to vote for activities that matched their interests, and so these 11 ideas were ranked as ones with the most votes. The ICC will convene to begin the planning work for all of these events.

* Benefit Event/Charity Gala
* Moon Festival (September)
* Tet Parade in San Jose (Common Float Theme) (January)
* Dance
* Ski Trip/Snowboard
* Parent Empowerment Workshop
* Camping Trip/Cabin
* Olympics
* Culture Camp for Kids
* April 30 Event for Veterans (April)
* Iron Chef

VSA FOCUSES

The Roadmap only focuses on events that all VSAs organize together. But there are also events that individual VSAs organize. For these events, the VSAs can counsel and give spiritual support one another. Here is a preliminary list:

* CSU East Bay (Hayward) / Thao Nguyen
  Charity Show (Oct 27)
* De Anza College / Cong Nguyen
  Film with Dinner Debut
* Mission College / Quyen Tran
  Vietnamese Music Concert
* San Francisco State University
  Restarting VSA
* San Jose State University
  Winter Formal; Culture Show
* UC Davis / Priscilla Luong
  Bike-A-Thon; Culture Show
* UC Santa Cruz / Thanh Nguyen
  Charity Show
* uNAVSA
  Campaign for Vietnamese Overseas Initiative for Conscience Empowerment (VOICE)
* BAVSA
  Tet Show

OTHER GROUPS & PROPOSALS

UVSA also gets requests for presence or involvement at events organized by non-VSA groups. For these events, the ICC shall decide how they might like to be involved.

* Oct 13 - Mid-Autumn Festival for High School VSAs (hosted by the Vietnamese American Foundation / Derek Nguyen)
* Oct 25 - "Words of Hope" Human Trafficking Awareness Event (hosted by the STOP The Traffick Campaign and the UC Berkeley Gender Equity Resource Center)
* Oct 27 - "Date A Rockstar" AIDS Benefit Event (hosted by Rock Your Awareness / Vanae Tran)
* Ao Dai Fashion Charity Auction / Trang Vo
* Typhoon Lekima Relief Drive / Ha Bui
* Vietnamse Food & Music Festival / Ha Bui
* VietHOPE Campaign / Alan Tu

CONCLUSION

With dozens of ideas to oversee and execute, the organizers of the UVSA Summit is excited to serve the community of VSAs, Vietnamese Americans, and the general mainstream. A generous donor has given $1000 to plant the seed for a successful year. Let's make this a groundbreaking debut for UVSA!
1:22 AM 
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Saturday, August 25, 2007 

Category: News and Politics
The purpose of these weekly potlucks is to connect leaders together and to really delve into the heart of important issues facing our youth community.

One thing that I must make clear is that the people I invite are not necessarily part of UVSA. Everyone is part of their own organization or act as individuals. It just so happens that the organizer is part of UVSA, but these potlucks do not and should not serve to absorb anyone into UVSA unless they so choose. I do not believe in imposing affiliation on someone if they are only acting as part of another organization. The point is to create a neutral space for all individuals to find common ground. But, we hope that UVSA becomes the guardian of that neutral space to foster dialogue.

This week's focus was on politics in Vietnam. How this pertains to local youths is simply the question of why local youths are not very savvy on homeland affairs. The answer has to do with lack of general and pervasive dialogue among youths. Another point might be a lack of relevance; youths who are born and grew up here might not have the same connection that their parents do. The idea that "it is our homeland" might not be enough to garner support from youths with Vietnamese ancestry. There has to be a fostered connection between youths in Vietnam and youths here, a connection that is real, not just philosophical.

The adult leaders do organize around these issues, and dialogue does happen, but youths do not attend these sort of rallies. It might have to do with language barriers, or that these events do not appeal to youths. I tried to bring up the notion of a "youth culture" that differs from our parents' culture and has a different appeal altogether. Or, as stated earlier, there might not be a real connection to anything in Vietnam.

What we do agree is this: we need a group of youths to be the catalyst. What actions we need to take is up for debate. But as an overview we will need to:

1. Have materials ready to educate a young person about developments in Vietnam (or really, any topic worth fighting for), assuming that the person doesn't know anything about the topic. For example, there should be 10 to 15 minute visual and narrated presentations giving an overview of the topic, as well as a reason why this is relevant to youths (our target audience). These materials should be ready to be presented at meetings and workshops at conferences and summits.

2. Create an appealing youth culture with messages that the youth can identify with. Youths are a very participatory audience; they prefer experience over lectures, creative personal expression over homogeneous messages, and require a space designated for their growth, as well as the acceptance of emergent and identifiable subcultures.

At the next potluck, there are several possible topics to bring up:
1. The state of Vietnamese-American youth entertainment and its ability to rally the youths.
2. The politics of cultural identity: who gets to decide what is Vietnamese and what isn't?
3. The diverging interests of first and second generation Vietnamese-Americans, and trying to find a common vision.
4. Creating the bridges between Vietnamese youths locally and... everywhere else.
12:12 AM 
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