SAPSA -- Write Up: Group 1C
Joanne Agus
Annika Altura
Chris Mai
George Welly
Link to the video:
a. What is your SAPSA about?
Our SAPSA is about addressing stereotypes people have about international students in universities in the states. It is more specifically a follow-up to Jim Li’s SAPSA by interviewing more non-Chinese international students. By doing this, we believe that we would be able to shift the perspective of local students on international students. Jim Li’s video was about breaking the stereotype of Chinese international students; it was an attempt to get others to understand the nature of their culture and find a place for them in the university. This video, however, exposes that international students do not only come from one culture, nor are they immersed in the Western world at the same level. Rather, our SAPSA project shows that international students come from different places and experiences but can still relate to the American college culture and shouldn’t be stereotyped as one single type of Asian.
b. Who is your intended audience?
Our intended audience is anyone who goes about their daily life in the same environment as international students. For the purposes of this video, American students in University would be targeted, since it is usually on a college campus where international students would experience being stereotyped. To see international students interviewed without a thicker accent or referencing the local pop culture would bring the target audience closer to international students on campus and hopefully break the cultural assumptions that they tend to have.
c. Did you accomplish what you set out to do?
We feel that we indeed accomplished what we were set out to do. By interviewing international students from different cultures, we drew commonalities between what the different interviewees were saying and realized that despite coming from different countries, we were all immersed in more western culture as well. Interviewing ourselves for the video also made us think deeply about where we come from and how we feel that we are being treated on campus due to our background. By interviewing non-international students as well, we were able to get a clear picture of their view on international students and show that they don’t necessarily put up a wall between themselves and other international students either. We realized that it really does come down to educating yourself about the world around you, and the SAPSA video both allowed us to do that, and allowed us to give others that opportunity.
d. What were the challenges?
The biggest challenge was securing interviews in such a short amount of time for this project. Knowing that the video could have only been five minutes long, we could only take so much of what one single person could say. Despite the large community of students that we have on campus, it was difficult finding the right people for the angle that we wanted to show in this video.
e. What would you have done differently?
If there’s anything that we could have done differently, we feel that due to the nature of this class being Asian American Studies, we would have focused more on Asian international students and how they integrate themselves within the Western culture. If not from China or India, most international Asian students tend to be from Southeast Asia, and we would like to gain a little bit more perspective on how moving from a smaller, less economic developing countries would affect the way they carry themselves and the way that they are treated in American culture.
f. What is the future of your SAPSA?
Hopefully someone else can do a follow-up to our SAPSA and it can be a chain of SAPSAs that together can provide a variety of perspectives on international students in universities. Jim Li’s video was made a few years ago, and our video now. As time passes, we understand that cultures change, technology improves, and the world becomes a little bit closer. We would like to see how international students grow in the community maybe five to ten years from now, and how their treatment in Universities changes with time as well.
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