We were assigned several different readings from the text “Fight the Tower”, and amongst those great pieces, the one that I wanted to bring light to in my blog post was Shannon Deloso’s “Precariously Positioned: Asian American Women Students’ Negotiating Power in Academia”. It is an eye-opening account of a young, female, Asian American college student named Shannon Deloso’s journey to defending and supporting the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. By doing her research, creating a support group, and confronting the authoritative figures behind the school’s decisions (ie. President Wong), she worked her way up from the bottom to effectively confront the school and fight for the College of Ethnic Studies. She illustrates how it is a rather difficult journey, especially for her, because as she was raised in a male-dominated household, it was scary to confront the adult male authoritative figures at her school. Further, she was filled with doubts all along her journey because she was afraid that she wasn’t good enough or that maybe she was wrong. In her excerpt, she also mentions how the President condescends the students by basically saying ”I hear you, but I won’t listen; and I know best” (Deloso 176). Over time, however, she was able to establish a group of students and staff who were willing to fight with her, and this gave her the courage and assurance to keep going. In the end, she succeeds through holding a hunger strike with numerous other individuals for 10 days. This made me realize the unfortunate reality that in our society if there is an inequality of power amongst certain individuals, one must lose his/her innocence to give the next generations what they deserve.
Question
What would have happened to all these individuals who participated in the hunger strike if the university remained adamant about removing the College of Ethnic Studies?
References
Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020).
Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Lacandler, S (2019). [Photo of Petra Metzger, who went on strike for 19 days]. Retrieved from https://metro.co.uk/2019/12/16/extinction-rebellions-oap-hunger-strikers-still-cant-eat-properly-11916557/
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