Yun Liu, A01, Week 5 Blog

In the article “Precariously Positioned: Asian American Women Students’ Negotiating

Power in Academia,” Shannon Deloso describes her journey that a woman leader of color defends the College of Ethnic Studies, fighting against structural oppression. I appreciate that she broke the stereotype of gender and race, overcame her fear of challenging the authority even though she was raised under a family with hierarchy.

      Deloso’s experience reminds me of the Student Union in my high school. Although the administration in my high school granted the Student Union the power to organize events and provide freedom for students to speak up their opinions, the administration limited every part of our activities for the excuse of a budget deficit, prohibiting students from speaking up. During the meeting, the administrates never listened to the students’ proposals but only point out our mistakes. Just like the bureaucratic obstacles the author experienced, we try to convince them the activity was feasible to hold, but they just delayed their response until the event had passed. The administration did not allow us to question their decisions. Thus, the Student Union was only an organization manipulated by governance. Unlike the author’s action, We stayed silent due to failures of movements. From the article, I learn that the power of uniting people suffering from similar injustice and discrimination. Instead of being silent, we should speak up and unite to fight against the injustice and structural issues by joining together, having campaigns, and strengthening our collective voice.

picture source:https://ahigh101.com/inspirational-quote-of-the-day-33/

Question: What would happen to the participants who joined movements and speaked up if the administration did not care about the movement and decided to remove the College of Ethnic Studies? 

Reference:

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.