OAKLAND, Calif. — “Hey, Mai, you’re a DREAM student, aren’t you? What is that like? Tell the rest of the class about what it’s like to be undocumented in this country.”
Dr. Jenny Banh did not even finish reciting those lines before mortified gasps, groans and hisses came from her audience. Banh asked people to divide into teams of two to role-play scenarios in which one person was Mai, a fictional college student, and the other a fictional professor who had uttered the boorish command.
When the teams later shared dialog lines with the rest of the group, the audience laughed at a sarcastic comment from one participant responding to the fictional professor: Did you catch me sleeping, professor?
Sarcasm aside, however, many of the teams agreed it would be fitting for Mai or one of her fictional classmates to tell the professor that the command was inappropriate.
Banh noted that, “unfortunately, this classroom scenario has happened a lot in real-life in recent months. Obviously, this humiliates a student whenever a faculty member says this sort of thing in class.”
Her remarks came last week during the annual conference of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education (APAHE).
Since its 1987 inception, the organization has developed programs and addressed issues impacting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The conference has increasingly become a venue for AAPI undergraduates and graduate students to find common ground with each other in their educational and life journeys, so it’s no surprise that attendance this year reached a record 650. In a nod to the conference theme of “Building Bridges and Connecting the Generations: 30 Years of Activism and Inclusion,” many of the workshops and sessions focused on topics in the national spotlight in the current educational and socio-political climate.
