Carol Chen and her peers were blindsided when the University of Arizona abruptly centralized six of the seven cultural resource centers in May, once students had already left campus.
“[It was] kind of like they wanted to hide it away from students’ eyes and avoid the backlash that they might have if they were to do it at the beginning of the school year,” she said.
Chen, a UA junior, is the co-president of the Asian Pacific American Student Council, which falls under the cultural resource center formerly known as the Asian and Pacific American Student Affairs.
It is now known as the Lotus Lounge.
Administration forced the center to remove “Asian” from its name, similar to the rest of the cultural resource centers that once had identifiers like “African American” and “Hispanic” in their titles. These changes came at a time when the Trump administration began cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts on campuses.
Auhona Shil is a UA sophomore and the co-director of external outreach on the Asian Pacific American Student Council.
“It was very difficult for us to come to terms with that and realize that we have to pick a new name that encompasses all of us and all different Asian people, but not be able to use the word ‘Asian’ in our name,” Shil said.
She said the name change has confused incoming students and has made it harder for current members to identify.
“My family is from the Indian subcontinent and just within the Indian subcontinent there are 2,000 different languages. And then expanding to Asia as a whole, there’s so many different cultures, so many languages spoken and a whole array of diversity,” Shil said.
Name changes were just one step of the centralization in late May. All center directors were laid off and replaced by two positions to direct six groups in the newly formed Student Culture and Engagement Hub.
This semester, university administration started holding “listening sessions” with cultural resource centers to hear students’ concerns such as safety and room reservation costs on campus, Shil said.
Chen said Jenna Hatcher, Vice Provost of Campus Community Connections, has been receptive in the session they’ve shared so far. Lotus Lounge has its second listening session with administrators on Thursday.
“I’m really appreciative that they’re actually following up on their word and it seems like they’re actually making an effort to try and understand student voices. I hope this wasn’t just a way to retroactively control for backlash,” she said.
While the center recruited fewer incoming students than usual this semester, Shil said the 20-plus clubs that fall under the resource center have helped get the word out about Asian communities on campus.
Still, she said, “All of these clubs were a little bit more united when we all knew that we were under APASA.”
Shil and her colleague on the student council — who co-wrote an opinion piece in The Daily Wildcat about the centralization — see this as an opportunity to unite with other cultural resource centers and to continue leadership efforts through the student council.
After all, it wasn’t their first time organizing against administration. Last year when the UA announced plans to displace cultural resource center spaces, students spoke up at a town hall and successfully prevented those anticipated changes.
Now, with the Trump administration's compact looming over the UA, Shil and another student have begun banding collaborating with the five other resource centers. They held the first official meeting last Thursday, Nov. 6, with approximately 20 members of other student groups.
President Donald Trump’s proposed compact would prioritize the university's federal funding opportunities in exchange for the implementation of conservative policies. The UA has not agreed to it, but instead sent a statement of university principles and said it was open to further discussions.
Shil and other groups are organizing the All-CRC Coalition which is working to get state officials to encourage an official rejection of the compact. Students will meet at a town hall this Friday at the Cesar Chavez Building Room 110 on campus from 3-5 p.m to strategize next steps. State Reps. Marianna Sandoval and Nancy Gutierrez and Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly will be in attendance.
“Everyone is very passionate about fighting for all the CRCs and, as we have more meetings, we’ll be more unified and able to urge for more benefits,” Shil said.
Both Shil and Chen said their hope is that communication between students and administrators improves so that Lotus Lounge can continue to offer the campus community safety and support that students need.
