Asian American Footsteps Conference

By: Alia Bonanno, Lauren Kim

Hundreds of students hailing from preparatory schools across New England started their Sunday morning with a performance by Asian-American comedy improvisation group Stir-Friday Night via Zoom. The first of many engaging events, the virtual comedy performance was the opening ceremony for the 2021 Asian American Footsteps Conference (AAFC).

The AAFC, started in 2011 by Asian faculty members at Phillips Academy Andover to provide spaces for Asian students to discuss their identity, is a yearly highlight for many Asian identifying prep school students. The 10th annual AAFC began at 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning with opening remarks and the Stir-Friday Night performance. A series of workshops followed, along with a community gathering session in which students gathered in small groups to bond with other attendees. Activist and journalist Helen Zia, known for her advocacy following the 1982 race-based murder of Vincent Chin, concluded the conference with closing remarks.

A total of twenty-one Exeter students helped organize the original 2020 and virtual 2021 conference along with Asian Student Program Coordinator and English Instructor Wei-Ling Woo and Director of Counseling and Psychological Services Szu-Hui Lee. According to Lee, the conference’s theme was “Passing the Torch,” a phrase that “symbolizes a recognition of what others have done that have allowed us to be where we are today and what we hope to pass forward as well.”

Attendees participated in workshops such as “Leadership as an Asian American,” “The Rise of Feminism in Asian Pop Culture” and “Engaging Asian American in Racial Justice.” Workshops were facilitated by current prep school students, and they featured alumni and faculty presenters.

According to senior and planning committee member Sarah Huang, hosting the AAFC took complex planning and a lot of team cooperation. “We had the planning committee and then we had a core committee within that… I worked with JaQ [Lai] on the design team and we had originally planned for [an] in-person [event,] obviously. We had designed banners or worked on t-shirts, stickers, and our logo for the website,” Huang said.

Keynote speaker Helen Zia was an exciting addition for the planning committee to add to the agenda. Zia spoke about about Asian American history in the United States, as well as how being a queer, Asian-American woman shaped her life, and the intersection of racial justice in that journey.

Upper and committee member Shantelle Subkhanberdina said, “We had big goals of bringing big people to campus. [Part of that was] brought to us by the pandemic because the factor of travel was completely removed and all it takes for someone to speak to us now is just a Zoom call. We were really, really happy with our speaker lineup,” Subkhanberdina said.

Huang described one of the goals of AAFC: to create healthy conversations across schools about topics like xenophobia, intersectionality and anti-Asian discrimination. “The conference was originally designed to center around Asian experiences… Over my time in AAFC, I've found that it's a really cool opportunity to meet other Asian students and have conversations that have just not been available to an Asian student in a predominantly white school,” Huang said.

Subkhanberdina agreed. “[The conference’s] purpose is to draw people together and create an affirming and accessible space to have conversations and get a little further on this journey of self-reflection that we're all on,” she said. “It's so uniquely diverse, too, because ordinarily, if I were to walk into an affinity space [at Exeter] for Asian students, I would [usually] find someone from central Asia… but today it was a really, really nice surprise to find a girl from Kyrgyzstan in my networking group.”

Committee member Michelle Park added how the connections she made during AAFC impacted her perception of being Asian-American. “AAFC was a really big turning point, at least in my life, just because I had a pretty difficult time kind of coming to terms with my identity, specifically my racial identity, and how fit into the Asian community,” Park said. “But when I first went to AAFC at Hotchkiss during my prep year, it was amazing to see this huge group of Asian identifying students all congregated in one space for the sole purpose of learning more about their identity and celebrating their culture.”

Berkshire School sophomore Wakaba Aihara also appreciated the opportunity to connect with other Asian-identifying queer students. “The workshops I attended allowed me to have an opportunity to reflect who I am and how my identity affects others around me. It was relieving to see other students who also identify as LGBTQ+ individuals, because there still is a stigma in Asian community with queer people, and I have never been able to speak openly about by sexual orientation with my parents or students at my school,” Aihara said.

Lower Zoë Chang also appreciated how the conference united Asian and Asian American-identifying individuals from similar circumstances. “With all the recent hate crimes against Asian-identifying people, as well as racism directed toward BIPOC as a whole, the conference this year was especially important. I think a lot of us needed a place to talk with other Asians about everything that has been going on. The number of times I heard students express their relief at others harboring similar reactions/feelings/thoughts towards the heaviness in our world right now is uncountable.”

Planning did not always come easy for the committee members, especially due to the postponement of the 2020 AAFC to 2021 due to COVID. “[Since] we got delayed, we lost a lot of the senior leadership that had been so crucial to the team,” Huang said. “[However,] I'm really glad that a lot of the seniors and upperclassmen everyone on the committee really [filled those] shoes well… the thought and intention that came into everything was really remarkable.”

Despite the challenges of the virtual format, Subkhanberdina describes the positive connections and relationships that were still able to form throughout the conference. “It was nice to see some familiar faces. [Even] now that it’s over, I personally am walking away with people's contact information and [I have] made new connections,” she said. “And that's the entire goal of the conference… I'm very happy with how it turned out.”

Participants, like committee members, appreciated all the dedication put towards this year's conference and the conversation it fostered. Concord Academy junior Audeep Cariens said, “I enjoyed having the opportunity to choose three unique workshops. I felt that choosing the workshops I was most interested in really improved my engagement.”

Most participants also felt the conference was well organized despite the virtual format, noting strong communication from workshop leaders in sending Zoom links and schedule information. “Although [it was] a shame to not be in person, I felt that the objective of the conference was still reached,” Cariens said.

The Hotchkiss School senior Olya Sukonrat agreed. “[Though] the powerful sense of being together [in-person] within the pan-Asian community was lost,” she said, “Exeter definitely did an impressive job of organizing the conference and making sure everything was running smoothly.”

Participants also appreciated the workshop and activities in fostering relevant conversation against anti-Asian discrimination. As Cariens put it, “[This] year's conference was especially [relevant] because it served as an additional way to process the stark increase in AAPI hate crimes and discrimination, especially the events of Atlanta.”

Hotchkiss sophomore Audrey Yoo valued the thoughtfulness of the workshop’s topics. “[The conference] really opened my eyes to new perspectives and inspired me to take even more action to minimize discrimination in the Hotchkiss community,” she said.

Miss Porter’s School freshman Leeah Han also appreciated the connection the conference provided with other AAIP students. “[It] was very refreshing for me to see [and] talk to other Asian identifying people who are passionate about activism,” she said.

Lee said, “The thing I look forward to most in the conference this and every year is being in community with other Asian identifying folks. It is a gift to be able to gather in community with others who get it. Every year I see young people whose minds are blown by the experience of being at AAFC as well as by the things they learn during the conference.”

“Every year I hear folks say, ‘Wow, I finally feel seen.’ Or “Gosh, I thought it was just me.”... That is why we do this conference and that is why a conference that started 10 years ago only gets stronger with each year. To help young people find strength and pride in their race and ethnic identity and the intersectionality with their other identities is what makes this conference so important. A gift for us all,” Lee added.

Reflecting upon the conference, participants agreed that the amount of effort put in by all contributors, whether it be the planning committee or the keynote speakers, was the true highlight of the event. Regardless of age or affiliated school, participants of the conference engaged eagerly in workshops, leaving with new connections and memorable impacts.

Sukonrat said, “I appreciated how much effort everyone (event organizers, workshop hosts, participants) puts into their respective workshops days before the actual event, and it's always nice to know that you share experiences, stories, and struggles with many other students, even if it is through a Zoom screen.”