We recognize that the people from Asia and Oceania are not a monolith and that historically, both the terms “Asian” and “Asian American” have excluded a large portion of the people who may otherwise identify with these geographic locations. Throughout the planning process for this conference, we have strived to acknowledge and address the harm done to marginalized communities within the larger population of Asians and Pacific Islanders in America. That being said, Tri-CASC seeks to encompass the widest set of identities, including people who identify as Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Pacific Islander American (API/A). However, the dominance of light-skinned East Asian narratives in the white imagination of what constitutes “Asia” has historically led to the exclusion and erasure of West, Central, and often South and Southeast Asians, as well as the frequent co-opting of Pacific Islander struggles in Asian American discourse while silencing their voices. Thus, we strive to envision a more inclusive interpretation of the term “Asian” than that which currently exists, defining “Asian” as anyone who has ties to the Asian continent. Nevertheless, we recognize that this history of exclusion will not be solved by a careful selection of a term and description of what we as the Tri-CASC planning team believe it to mean. We invite you to join us in interrogating what it means to be API/A, learning the histories and experiences of those most marginalized, and redefining the terms through which we fight against white supremacy.

Though Tri-CASC was created by and primarily aims to serve API/A identifying students, we recognize that many of our workshops address topics that are relevant to people with many different identities. Tri-CASC will serve as a space for attendees to learn from both our invited guests and each other, and we believe that someone who may not identify as API/A has a place in this conference both to learn and to inform others about their experiences. That being said, Tri-CASC was created because we recognized a need for a space catered specifically to API/A students and the issues facing the API/A community, so we ask that, as an ally, before you register to attend this conference, you ask yourself the following questions: Why is it that I want to attend this conference? What role will I play? How will my presence affect the space? If you do not feel that you can attend the entire conference, we welcome you to attend our open events and register for our keynote event.

Our keynote is open to everyone, including professors, non-API/A identifying folks, and folks from outside the Tri-Co/Philly area. ​ Our conference workshops, unless asked by otherwise from the workshop hosts, will be open to students that are both API/A identifying and allies, including those from outside the Tri-Co/Philly area. Student's demographics range from highschool to recently graduated alumni.

The deadline to register for the conference is April 15th, 2021 - one day before the conference.

All parts of the conference are completely free, but you must register here in order to attend.

You do not have to stay for the entire conference (but we would love to have you!). We will send an email closer to the date of the conference with zoom links to each event.

For the 2021 virtual conference, we hope to see your faces on Zoom. So make sure to dress appropriately to maintain a comfortable and professional environment for our conference.

In every session of the conference, participants can turn on live transcription. The live transcript button is on the bottom of the Zoom screen, located between the buttons for share screen and reactions. Zoom’s live transcript function offers both subtitles and full transcript. For sessions where we have the speaker’s permission to record, we will make the recording with a caption option available to participants after the conference. If you have any accommodation concerns, please let us know in your registration or email us at tricasc@gmail.com.

For Tri-Co students, applications for the 2021-2022 conference team will open right after this year’s conference ends. Be on the lookout for more information as the conference approaches!

In every session of the conference, participants can turn on live transcription. The live transcript button is on the bottom of the zoom screen, located between the buttons for share screen and reactions. Zoom’s live transcript function offers both subtitles and full transcript. For sessions where we have the speaker’s permission to record, we will make the recording with a caption option available to participants after the conference. If you have any accommodation concerns, please let us know in your registration or email us at tricasc@gmail.com.

Our aim for Tri-College Asian Student Conference 2021 is for us to all learn together and have a positive experience. To achieve this goal, we need to create an environment in which everyone feels comfortable to participate. All participants are expected to help build a safe and positive community.

Build on others' ideas and thoughts. Share your experiences and ask questions. Be open to new concepts and ideas.

Respectfully challenge the idea, not the person. There will be differences of opinion. Please be open to hearing other people's perspectives and challenge the idea in a respectful and courteous manner. Constructive discussions are beneficial to all.

Don't attack, blame, or engage in put-downs. Disrespectful behavior and harassment will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to immediately remove participants from the conference for any harmful behavior.

Follow general Zoom guidelines. Please turn on your camera if you feel comfortable doing so. Our speakers will greatly appreciate being able to see you. To respect the hosts and participants, mute your microphone unless you are speaking. Background noise disrupts the meeting for everyone. Please raise your hand before speaking or type in the chat unless the host explicitly states otherwise. Also, wait for others to finish speaking before you speak.

Respect the confidentiality of others. During certain points of the conference, attendees may feel compelled to share something personal. To ensure that the spaces provided in this conference are safe for all attendees, please be sure to not share any of this information outside of those discussions.

Recognize your limits and comfort levels. Although discomfort is an important step towards learning, please also remember to take care of yourself. We encourage you to take a small break if certain conversations are pushing you beyond your comfort level.

Questions to keep in mind: To make the most of this conference, we encourage everyone to ask themselves: What do you wish to take away from this conference? What roles/tools do you bring to this conversation? How is this relevant in your own life? What can you do to make transformative change after this conference?

In every session of the conference, participants can turn on live transcription. The live transcript button is on the bottom of the zoom screen, located between the buttons for share screen and reactions. Zoom’s live transcript function offers both subtitles and full transcript. For sessions where we have the speaker’s permission to record, we will make the recording with a caption option available to participants after the conference. If you have any accommodation concerns, please let us know in your registration or email us at tricasc@gmail.com.

We want to take the time to recognize that this conference is taking place on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples and that the institutions of Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr Colleges, were founded upon the exclusion and erasure of many Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, the privileges we have in organizing a conference such as this one and being able to learn in this space is predicated on the genocide of Indigenous peoples. The acknowledgement of the land we occupy is not only a statement to address past wrongdoings, but to understand that this continues to be stolen Lenape land and that those who have a rightful claim to it are here and still experiencing the injustices of settler colonialism.

We emphasize that this statement is not meant to be a form of absolution, but rather the first of many steps in working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of white supremacy and settler colonialism. In the words of scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, decolonization is not a metaphor, but rather an active undoing of settler colonialism through the return of land and a reclamation by Indigenous peoples of their ways of life. Until that occurs, we must recognize that, unless we are indigenous to the land or the direct descendant of chattel slaves, we are settlers in this very moment. Thus, throughout this conference and thereafter, we urge you to critically deconstruct the ways in which you are complicit in the ongoing structure of settler colonialism, reflect on the Indigenous tribes that were and are continually being displaced, killed, and erased for you to interact with and within this space, and interrogate your role in the process of decolonization. Resources on land acknowledgements, the people whose land we occupy, and settler colonialism can be found below.

As API/A students who take inspiration from the work of API/A activists, we must also acknowledge the work of the Black activists and scholars who came before. Black folx, especially Black women and nonbinary folx, have always been at the forefront of fighting for justice, whether that be during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s or the #BlackLivesMatter campaign of today. They have consistently paved the way for all marginalized communities, often supporting API/As even as the API/A community did not and often continues to not support them through its complicity in white supremacy, especially through anti-Black racism. We acknowledge the work of Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the theory of intersectionality, and all the Black feminist scholars, writers, and activists, such as bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis, who preceded her and applied an intersectional lens in their work before the term was created. While the idea of intersectionality is deeply embedded in the programming of our conference, it is critical to remember that the term was created specifically to describe the experiences of Black women due to the intersections of racism and patriarchy in the context of domestic violence. We also recognize that being API/A and being Black is not mutually exclusive and that all of us have numerous identities that serve to oppress and privilege us in various ways. However, we want to emphasize the frequent erasure and co-opting of Black struggle in POC spaces and make a commitment to do better. We, as non-Black POCs, must grapple with the ways in which we may uphold racial hierarchy, even in our own organizing and activism. While this self-reflexive process is critical, never does it excuse us of the harm we inflict.

The struggles and experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples is unique, and the liberation of API/As and all oppressed peoples is predicated first and foremost on the liberation of Black and Indigenous folx. The society we live in today was built not only on the backs of chattel slaves but also quite literally on top of Indigenous communities. This work cannot be done with a single-issue mindset - achieving justice for API/A communities means following the lead of Black and Indigenous folx who have been doing the work and engaging in difficult conversations long before API/As entered this space. API/As must fight for their freedoms even when we cannot see a direct link to our own. We ask that you reflect on the genocide of Indigenous peoples, work of Black activists, and continued unique marginalization of these two groups as you interact with the programming of this conference and throughout your organizing work.

In that light, we ask, how many of you have thought about settler colonialism in the historical sense, rather than as an ongoing structure? How many of you move freely spatially and geographically without reflecting on the Indigenous tribes that were and are continually being displaced, killed, and erased for you to do so? How many of you have considered, or consider yourselves settlers, especially in this exact moment?

RESOURCES:

Find whose land you are on

Download the Native Land app

http://www.nanticoke-lenape.info/community.htm

https://sites.google.com/site/3tribeconfederation/

“Decolonization is not a Metaphor” (Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang)

Decolonizing Diaspora: Whose Traditional Land Are We On? (Celia Haig-Brown)

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color (Kimberlé Crenshaw)

Our aim for Tri-College Asian Student Conference 2021 is for us to all learn together and have a positive experience. To achieve this goal, we need to create an environment in which everyone feels comfortable to participate. All participants are expected to help build a safe and positive community.

Build on others' ideas and thoughts. Share your experiences and ask questions. Be open to new concepts and ideas.

Respectfully challenge the idea, not the person. There will be differences of opinion. Please be open to hearing other people's perspectives and challenge the idea in a respectful and courteous manner. Constructive discussions are beneficial to all.

Don't attack, blame, or engage in put-downs. Disrespectful behavior and harassment will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to immediately remove participants from the conference for any harmful behavior.

Follow general Zoom guidelines. Please turn on your camera if you feel comfortable doing so. Our speakers will greatly appreciate being able to see you. To respect the hosts and participants, mute your microphone unless you are speaking. Background noise disrupts the meeting for everyone. Please raise your hand before speaking or type in the chat unless the host explicitly states otherwise. Also, wait for others to finish speaking before you speak.

Respect the confidentiality of others. During certain points of the conference, attendees may feel compelled to share something personal. To ensure that the spaces provided in this conference are safe for all attendees, please be sure to not share any of this information outside of those discussions.

Recognize your limits and comfort levels. Although discomfort is an important step towards learning, please also remember to take care of yourself. We encourage you to take a small break if certain conversations are pushing you beyond your comfort level.

Questions to keep in mind: To make the most of this conference, we encourage everyone to ask themselves: What do you wish to take away from this conference? What roles/tools do you bring to this conversation? How is this relevant in your own life? What can you do to make transformative change after this conference?

Aspects of this year’s conference will be open to both API/A and non-API/A identifying participants. As Tri-CASC was created mainly for the API/A community and our top priority is to make sure the conference offers a safe space for our API/A attendees to have discussions they might otherwise might not be able to have in their normal communities. If you are a non-API/A identifying participant, we ask that you follow the guidelines listed below, along with the general community guidelines, to help us maintain our safe spaces.

Respect when a workshop is open to only API/A identifying participants. Not all conference programming will be offered to non-API/A identifying participants. You can find out which conference and workshop sections are opened to you by looking through the programming page on our website. If a section is only available to API/A identifying participants, please do not attend the workshop.

Be mindful of the space/speaking opportunity you occupy. The goal of the conference is to provide discussion spaces for our API/A community. We do believe in collective learning and knowledge, and we definitely encourage you to contribute to the discussions when possible. However, please be mindful of whether you might be dominating the conversation and overshadowing the voices of API/A attendees sharing the space.

Be active and responsible for your own learning. This year’s conference program spans a large range of topics that are important to the API/A community. We do not expect all the topics to be familiar to you and encourage you to ask questions to further your learning. However, we also ask that you come prepared and educate yourself on general topics prior to joining the discussion.Your learning is not the responsibility of API/A identifying conference peers.

Prior to the conference, we will be emailing registered participants the Day of Dashboard page, which contains information on how to access or join a specific event. Please be sure to register here in order to receive our emails.

Please note that for those who registered for the Saturday workshop, you are not required to attend all events. However, some workshops do have limited Zoom capacity, so we will prioritize participants based on a first-come first-serve basis. For Saturday workshops and social events, registered participants are allowed to change workshop or session if that particular workshop or session is still open.

Please carefully read the program details information on whether a workshop is available to you, as we aim to get as many API/A-identifying folks a room at the conference as we can. We hope for your cooperation to make this virtual conference as smooth as possible!

As written in our mission statement, Tri-CASC seeks to create a space for all who identify as Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, and/or Pacific Islander American (API/A). We feel that it is important to recognize that often in using the umbrella term of API/A, we fall short in including the narratives and experiences of Pacific Islanders, Pacific Islander Americans, and many other groups that fall under the term. While often lumped with the Asian American community as one political entity, Pacific Islanders have unique histories and face unique challenges, and these narratives are often erased and co-opted into the greater struggle of “API/A issues.” In the context of an American society that usually groups API/As together, a conference inherently political in nature must be inclusive of Pacific Islander voices.

Additionally, we would like to acknowledge the ways in which our conference program lacks in representation of the international student experience and other narratives that may not align with the Asian American experience. In the establishment of the logistics of this conference, we have failed to create conference times that are accessible for any student studying in time zones outside of the western hemisphere.

Though the planning team this year has put in our greatest efforts to create a conference program that represents all the identities and experiences that make up the API/A community, we do acknowledge that our intent may not always be the outcome. Tri-CASC will continue to commit to continue critically evaluating who is and is not sharing in this space and to do better in the future.

Prior to the conference, we will be emailing registered participants the Day of Dashboard page, which contains information on how to access or join a specific event. Please be sure to register here in order to receive our emails.

Please note that for those who registered for the Saturday workshop, you are not required to attend all events. However, some workshops do have limited Zoom capacity, so we will prioritize participants based on a first-come first-serve basis. For Saturday workshops and social events, registered participants are allowed to change workshop or session if that particular workshop or session is still open.

Please carefully read the program details information on whether a workshop is available to you, as we aim to get as many API/A-identifying folks a room at the conference as we can. We hope for your cooperation to make this virtual conference as smooth as possible!

Aspects of this year’s conference will be open to both APIS/A and non-APIS/A identifying participants. As Tri-CASC was created mainly for the APIS/A community and our top priority is to make sure the conference offers a safe space for our APIS/A attendees to have discussions they might otherwise might not be able to have in their normal communities. If you are a non-APIS/A identifying participant, we ask that you follow the guidelines listed below, along with the general community guidelines, to help us maintain our safe spaces.

Respect when a workshop is open to only APIS/A identifying participants. Not all conference programming will be offered to non-APIS/A identifying participants. You can find out which conference and workshop sections are opened to you by looking through the programming page on our website. If a section is only available to APIS/A identifying participants, please do not attend the workshop.

Be mindful of the space/speaking opportunity you occupy. The goal of the conference is to provide discussion spaces for our APIS/A community. We do believe in collective learning and knowledge, and we definitely encourage you to contribute to the discussions when possible. However, please be mindful of whether you might be dominating the conversation and overshadowing the voices of APIS/A attendees sharing the space.

Be active and responsible for your own learning. This year’s conference program spans a large range of topics that are important to the APIS/A community. We do not expect all the topics to be familiar to you and encourage you to ask questions to further your learning. However, we also ask that you come prepared and educate yourself on general topics prior to joining the discussion. Your learning is not the responsibility of APIS/A identifying conference peers.