Student Groups, Networks, and Solidarity
By Constance Legrand '25, Tanya Wongsri '25, Jessi Yu '25, and Kai Zhou '24
Throughout our time looking in the archives and interviewing alumni and different stakeholders, we’ve discovered a trend of Asian clubs and organizations being created, dissolving after a few years and having to be recreated. We feel this trend is indicative of a lack of institutional support from the College administration. Additionally, the historical absence of unity and organization in the Asian community at Dartmouth also heavily impacts the ability of organizations to survive, once again highlighting the need for an Asian American Studies department.
We’ve included a non-exhaustive list of Asian clubs/organizations including all political, social, affinity, art, academic, and Asian identifying spaces. We are continuing to find more information to fill in gaps, which has proved challenging owing to the dearth of relevant information contained in the archives. Most of this knowledge was word-of-mouth from past students, which highlights the lack of institutional memory of these developments. Our hope is that the information presented in this exhibit would make it easier for current and future students to replicate the organizations, possibly with the assistance of alumni who undertook similar endeavors in their time at the College.
