PAC and APIC: Asian Group Solidarity

Pan Asian Council

The Pan Asian Council (PAC) was an umbrella organization founded in the winter of 1995, designed to coordinate activity and encourage solidarity between various Asian and Asian American-related student groups. The Council ensured that groups did not plan conflicting events, wrote proposals to benefit the Pan-Asian community at Dartmouth, and hosted community events. For most of its early years, PAC was advised and heavily shaped by Nora Yasumura, the Advisor to Asian and Asian American students. As PAC continued to grow, it became a robust organization that built strong relationships with Asian clubs, and it hired student interns to organize and mobilize Asian organizations on campus.
PAC’s programs and initiatives included:

The Closer to Home Program, which worked with administration to increase yield of Asian students
Pan Asian Community Dinners
Asian American Studies Initiative
Initiatives to increase Southeast Asian representation and support
And many more!

The Pan-Asian Council is no longer active. However, the PAC room, a resource room in Robinson Hall which the PAC advocated for, continues to be utilized by Asian students and student groups. Additionally, calls for a recreation of PAC are beginning to surface because of an increased interest in building coalitions across Asian student organizations and advocacy for Asian American studies.

Asian & Pacific Islander Caucus

The Asian & Pacific Islander Caucus (APIC) was PAC's spiritual successor. APIC was founded in the mid-to-late 2010s, in its peak hosting biweekly meetings involving a variety of organizations and community groups such as 4A, KSA, and the Asian-American Living Learning Community as well as interest based groups with significant Asian ties and membership such as Dartmouth Tae Kwon Do, Raaz, and People of Color Outdoors.
APIC still is active today, although in a much smaller capacity than it once was, with much of its event-planning activity ending in Spring 2022.