Maanasi Shyno 00:01
Hi, my name is Maanasi. As Divya said, I just graduated this past June and I studied Sociology and Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at Dartmouth. I was part of the founding group that started the Dartmouth Asian American Studies Collective. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to talk a little bit more about the work me and my peers did, and kind of what's happening now. So, thank you so much for this opportunity.

Christina Huang 00:25
Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. Your perspective's really valuable to us. So to start off, we wanted to ask you, can you tell us a little bit how Asian American Studies played a role in your life, at Dartmouth and beyond?

Maanasi Shyno 00:39
Yeah, sure. So, a general overview. And maybe you'll be asking questions about how DAASC started, and all of those things. So, I'll try to keep this one a bit short.

But when I came into Dartmouth, I was interested in taking classes about South Asians and history and things like that. But when I looked at the courses that we had offered, there's a department called ASCL (Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages), I think Asian Studies, Cultures, Languages, and they rotate between the different Asian countries, and have different classes on those. So, when I came in, they were doing a bunch of classes on India and South Asia, but none of them were really resonating with what I wanted to learn. And they were all being taught by mostly white professors. So, I wasn't really excited or interested and I kind of just let that go for a long time. But I was studying sociology, and I also was taking some WGSS classes about that in like my freshman, sophomore year. So, I was definitely interested in race and ethnicity and how those play in America. So, when I was studying these things, a lot of the time, there would be classes that were cross listed with other departments. So, I was taking a lot of classes in our LALACS (Latin American, Latino & Caribbean Studies) or Latinx, Latin Studies Department. And a lot of those things were like, not relatable to me in that direct way. But it was the closest thing I had to ethnic studies that was related to me. And so that was something that was on my mind, in the back of my mind, my first two years at Dartmouth, but I didn't really know what exactly I was missing. And I had this, this total misperception that the reason that we have every other kind of major ethnic group studies at Dartmouth, but not Asian American Studies, was because we didn't need to study Asians because Asians weren't suffering, they were the model minority. And all of those kind of myths wrapped up into one. I was really affected by that. So I was like, I don't need to study Asians because Asians don't suffer, Asians don't struggle, or Asians have a really recent history in the US, all of which is like, totally untrue. And I just didn't perceive myself as a subject worth studying.

And then some time, my sophomore spring. So, Dartmouth is split up into quarters. You might hear me saying fall, winter, spring, summer. So in my sophomore spring, I was living with one of my freshman year friends in Boston with some other folks. And she was taking these classes on Asian America and like the very few classes that were offered. And it was kind of around that time that we really started talking about race and Asians in particular. And it was not that I had no racial consciousness or anything like that. I just didn't have this depth that I think they do, a little bit much more now. So that was kind of where I started to really think about myself as somebody whose history should be documented, who has, you know- even if I was immigrated here, I'm connected to a much larger lineage of people who exist in the US. And that was kind of when we started having those conversations. And I can talk a little bit more about that. But generally, after that spring, after we started working, I was able to really think more and intentionally choose classes that were offered, there were very few, but I still tried to take them. So that summer, I took my first Asian American Studies class, which was Bodies and Technologies in Asian American Pop Culture. It was amazing. It was a lot of watching movies and shows but also reading dense things and I had a wonderful professor, her name was Najwa Mayer, and she was a huge mentor to me.

And afterwards, I took a few other Asian American Studies classes, things that were cross listed. I eventually ended up doing my own independent study on South Asian American history that I did through the Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies department, so it was more focused on like, gender and race and class and caste, obviously. And I took that with the professor that I just mentioned. She was very gracious and did that study with me. But even that was very hard to manage, because I had to create my own syllabus, and kind of create my own whole study of classes. And she was a postdoc at the time. So they definitely, were very cautious about letting me work with a postdoc. But she was so enthusiastic and so helpful, that she just really wanted to do it for me, even though it was a little bit extra work for her. And she was compensated and everything. But you know, when you're a postdoc, you're supposed to kind of have your time protected. So that really opened my eyes to so much, having those conversations with her, being in that class, writing the papers I wrote in that class.

And yeah, then I took my WGSS seminar in Asian American Studies as well. So, yeah, I really enjoyed my experience. But I definitely can say that, I mean, I think I've probably listed like three classes for you where I actually had the opportunity to study what I wanted to study, but also take Asian American Studies. And I found a way to make them all fit into my majors and get like credit and everything for them. But that was a struggle for myself. And probably in the time I was there, there are probably maybe like, three to four, maybe five total Asian American Studies classes offered, only one of them repeated in my memory, which was the Bodies and Technologies class, that only was taught one more time before I took it. And so yeah, there's not too much offered. So, I didn't really get to have that experience of, okay, I'm an Asian American Studies advocate, and I'm going to take all the classes they have to offer. I totally did not get to do that, because that's just not how the schedule worked and that's not how the offerings worked. But I think what I was able to garner, I did learn a lot. And it definitely shaped how I thought about myself, my family, my culture, who I am in this country as an immigrant. And also, just like the importance of Asian American Studies.

As I was taking the classes, it became more and more important to me, because when I started working on Asian American Studies organizing, I hadn't taken any classes. It was my best friend at the time who really was like fired up about this. And it was me as a friend and a supporter who was like, "Yeah, let's do something!" From our conversations. I hadn't personally, really benefited from any Asian American Studies offerings. I didn't know, the extent to which what I was fighting for would become important to me later on, if that makes sense. So that's like a very broad overview of everything that I personally was engaged in, in the classroom. And of course, outside, there were many other things. We had speakers come to Dartmouth, who are Asian Am focused, especially after we started advocating for it. Recently, we had Franny Choi come in, in the spring. And that was amazing. She's awesome. We had, you know, David Eng come and speak to us, and he specifically wanted to talk to DAASC. And those experiences were really awesome outside the classroom. I think once we started to show that we had interest and engagement, even from us as a small team of… I think we were like five or six in the very beginning. I think professors were trying to provide those opportunities for us in the ways they could. And I was enriched a lot outside the classroom and like organizing and those sorts of aspects as well.

Christina Huang 08:32
Yeah, thank you so much for providing that extensive background. I think that's a lot to take on, especially when you're nearing your end of your college career. And you're trying to figure out what you're going to be and you're like, oh, but there's this whole new world that you didn't really get to explore that much.

Maanasi Shyno 08:50
Yeah, I mean, I felt like it was kind of in the middle. I did the organizing work for about two years. So yeah, definitely.

Christina Huang 09:00
Could you… I'm very curious about that. Could you walk us through the process of your student advocacy for the program? Like what did it look like? How did you get involved?

Maanasi Shyno 09:08
Yeah, sure. So, as I mentioned that spring I was living with Lily Ren, and she and I were having all these conversations. Definitely. We were friends since before freshman year. We met at like, we're both from like the LA area. And we had met at a- or our parents kind of had met at like an acceptance dinner, something like that. So, we actually traveled together. We were on First-Year Trips, which is the orientation program. We did that together. We were quite friendly. And we reconnected a few months after the pandemic had started and we were separated for a while. And we had made this plan with a few other people to live together. So that's kind of how we ended up living together. And our living situation was interesting because people were still trying to transition out of being alone and in isolation. We moved in together so we would talk more and we definitely did. But we were all kind of, I don't want to say we were all introverted, because I don't think that's true. I wouldn't call myself introverted necessarily. But yeah, anyway, so this is not related to the actual history.

So I'll tell you about that. So, we were living together, we're having all these conversations, long conversations, it's like hours and hours of talking. Quite literally hours. And we're talking about race. At the time, I had a really strong gender lens. And, I was developing that as well. So that was kind of what I was offering to the table, talking about, you know, gender, and being a woman and those sorts of things. And she was talking about race, and we were just kind of discovering things together from our shared experiences. And she was in this class with Professor Eng-Beng Lim, who has been the- probably the longest advocate for Asian Am Studies at Dartmouth, and the only Asian American Studies professor for a very long time. Just recently, we hired two new people who are Asian Am Studies people, but anyway. So she was in class with him. And he told her about this, kind of, there's an Asian American Studies Working Group amongst postdocs. And they were having some sort of town hall kind of event to talk about what is Asian American Studies, what is the state of Asian American Studies, and Asian Am organizing at Dartmouth currently. So she was like, Yeah, we should go to the zoom, you should come with me. We joined the zoom. And one of the questions they asked was, so what happened to 4A (Asian American Students 4 Action), which was the previous Asian Am organizing group, they organized for a bunch of things, one of which was Asian American Studies. And there was like, nobody responded. Even though there were students on the call, even though there were a few older members of 4A, I think, our upperclassmen, the '22s at the time, there were like two who were on the call. And they were freshmen, when 4A kind of was in its last stages, like, its prime for about a year, and then it kind of fell apart.

You know, the institution just weighs on these organizations. And that's the point. The point is to kind of put all these pressures, these barriers, that make it very hard for students to organize in a sustainable way. Most student groups like that are doing this sort of work; it isn't lasting very long. And I'm sure you guys have experience with that in your university as well. It's the pressure of the four years and transitioning things and, you know, all of that stuff is just really hard. So, no one had raised their hand and somebody had- one of the '22s had said something like, “Oh, you know, it's not functional anymore. We tried over COVID and then we kind of lost it. And oh, well.” And this was still during the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic is still going on, but you know what I'm saying, so. Also, by the way, when I say '22s, '23s, '25s, like, those numbers are representing the class years. That's how we call them at Dartmouth, instead of saying sophomores and juniors, because it changes every year. Like I would call myself a '23. So that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about '22s, the one year above us. So yeah, they were like, oh, it's dead. So yeah, I'm getting a bit long winded. So, I'm gonna try to speed it up a bit. But-

Christina Huang 13:30
Take all the time you need in the world.

Divya Aikat 13:32
Yeah, you're telling the story really well, like keep going.

Christina Huang 13:36
Yeah.

Maanasi Shyno 13:37
Okay, well, so. So yeah, basically, we have this town hall. We get off the call, and she's like, oh, I wish we could do something. And at the time, I was about a year into starting another organization called Spare Rib, which is a feminist magazine that I started with some of my other friends. And I met a lot of great people. And I was really very empowered by the fact that if you're with the right people, if you have the right cause, if you care about something, it can happen. Because we had started this publication our freshman spring/summer, and we published the first time in the fall. And it was thriving. We were doing awesome. And it's still alive today. It's still like, super big and thriving. So, at the time I was feeling very empowered by the fact that if we have an idea, if we have the right people, it can happen.

And so I told her, let's just do it. Like, let's do something, I will help you. I have all this experience that I've built up over the last year, doing a different kind of organizing and advocacy work. You have the knowledge about Asian American Studies, and you're building it. Let's put these two things together and start an advocacy group. And let's just begin. And so that was kind of where we started. We just had been talking about it and then summer term at Dartmouth, sophomores take their summer term on campus. So, we were on campus. And there were a few people that we had reached out to through like a big email that we sent out through another organization. And so, we had like two '22s who were interested, and plus us, and maybe like a handful of other people who kind of floated in and out. But that was the main group, it was like the four of us. And we would just talk about what we are going to do and what this should be like.

At some point in the summer, I suggested that we write something because as I said, I was part of feminist magazine, I was really coming into myself as a writer, and Willie was also an amazing writer. And at that time, we had both decided to also do a double major in Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies. And in WGSS, you do a lot of reading of manifestos, and that's kind of a mode of feminist writing. So, I was like, let's take inspiration from- like my manifesto, that I feel like I always come back to which is the Combahee River Collective statement. So, we used the template of the CRC statement. For inspiration, we had a little reading group, we collected formatting ideas. And we started to write this towards the end of the summer. At that time, we also had a few other '23s and people that joined and it was really awesome. So it was basically mostly me and Lily, plus this other '23 named Daniel Lin, who wrote most of the statement, I would say. Definitely a lot of me and Lily because he was still like learning about Asian American Studies at the time. He was doing an independent study where he read a lot of Asian Am history, I guess. And that was kind of what inspired him to join the group. And so he was kind of bringing that layer to it. So how we went about writing, even though we're such a big group, was the two '22s were off campus. We were kind of like, do not worry about writing, necessarily. We need help editing. And we just sat down and wrote chunks together, or separately, in the late nights. And it took us a few days.

I think one section that I'm really proud of that I think I should mention is we had this section where we talked about why Asian American Studies is important to students, like based on student testimonials. So we did a bunch of like little interviews, nothing like this, where you're like recording and things like that, mostly just talking to people, especially '23s, because that's who was on campus. And who was responding at that time, because it was summer. So we'd meet up and we would just be like, "What is your experience with being Asian at Dartmouth? What is your experience with Asian American Studies, and your identity and studying race if you study race?" And people were saying all of these really awesome things. And we were like, this is a collective statement. How do we put collective voices into a statement where you can also have a very difficult time writing with more than a few people? How do you do that? And that was kind of where we had come up with this idea of putting direct quotes in from people. For privacy reasons, we didn't put their names, but we put like bullet points. And then in parentheses, we would write the actual quote, and that was the section I was really proud of. I think most of the interviews were done by like me and Daniel Lin. And I think that was a really great actual collective part of our statement.

And so after that, we started to advertise meetings again for the fall. And we had a bunch of people come. It was again, in and out because at the time, we were still figuring out how to be organizers. We didn't have any real organizing background, even if we were both bringing different skills to the table. And during that time, we recruited Sanjana Raj, who's a '25. Amazing woman. Yes, and she was a freshman. So she had a lot of energy. And so it's like us three, Sanjana Raj, [redacted], Karen Zheng, and Anupam Sharma who I tried to connect you guys with. It was the seven of us who are really the core members of the group who were there all the time, and working on this. So, the rest of them, they had the project of heavily editing the statement, and at that time, we also kind of came up with a release plan. So yeah, I think it was October maybe we released the statement on email. And that was great. We had a little social media strategy that [redacted] put together, she's really good at that stuff. And we kind of just blasted it and we were very passively getting a lot of signatures on our petition. We talked about it in class. We just want to bring awareness because one of the things we realized was, in our interviews with so many people, they had that same thought that I did that Asians aren't worth studying. Like, we're not subjects worth studying. And a lot of people also just had so many different thoughts about their identities. And, you know, questions of like, do I count as Asian? Do I count as Asian American? These sorts of questions were things people were coming up with.

Let's be fully frank, like Dartmouth ethnic studies is not super robust, compared to some other universities. But the professors who do exist in our AAAS department, in our LALACS department, they were amazing professors. And, you know, it's the University not offering enough and not funding it enough. But even then, like a lot of people really desire to learn more about their identities and race and have those opportunities. And that was just something that was really clear. But people were very confused about the very basic things about Dartmouth like, okay, why are you asking for Asian American studies when there's an ASCL department, and it's like, ASCL is very different than Asian American Studies. It's a completely different route. And so, you know, that's the kind of stuff that we were weaving into the petition and wanting people to read it. And so, yeah, things like, okay, ASCL comes from a much more Orientalist observing tradition. That's why the department looks like this. That's why the department teaches these classes. That's why there's very little focus on migration in ASCL versus LALACS and AAAS as that is a huge section of it, like talking about migration and all of those things. Diaspora Studies, like that's very integrated in those departments, because they're thinking about individuals as people who move and migrate and have cultures that change and shift. So those are all those things that people would ask us, and they would be like, look at our statement, this is us trying to show you this.

And so we got about, like, I think over 1000 signatures, and we had a goal of hitting 1500 or so before we tried to schedule a real conversation with administration to be able to show: “Here is our petition; 1500 people have signed it. This is important to us.” And we're getting like a lot of advice from the few Asian American professors on campus who are like, these tactics will work on administration, these will not, you need to advocate for this, here's how to build your list of demands up from what you have on the petition. So that was kind of like what we were doing for the fall. And we did have a conversation with, you know, one of the senior administrators about Asian American Studies, and there's just so many things where we weren't really sure who was kind of on our side, and who was really bound up by the, you know, bureaucratic ties and wanted to help us but couldn't. Those are questions that we were always wondering. And I think around that time, we were just building our strategy. So that fall, David Eng reached out to us, and we had a lunch with him. It was amazing. It was very empowering. And I think just the traction, we were getting somewhere, somehow, I think I know how.

I don't really want to share because I'm not sure it is true. But there was a New York Times reporter who reached out to us, and she was like, “Yeah, I'm covering, you know, student movements. And I'd love to cover yours. And when can I chat with you and Lily?” Was kind of like, what happened, and we were really excited about this. However she heard about it, we were like, this is great for us, great publicity. We were like, okay, we need to come up with a strategy. And we also just really cared about, you know, we're a collective. And that means operating in a certain way. That means everyone has an equal say, that means discussion comes first. And it truly was just the seven of us for so long. So, we just, it just felt very wrong for the interview to just be about me and Lily even though we had started the group. And even though we were fueling it for like most of the summer, it was us. Because all the people who I just mentioned, they were core members, they were doing the work, they were the ones who were showing up every week to our meetings and doing it. And we were taking turns being like the facilitators and everything. It was just not the "Me and Lily Show" even if we were both putting in so much energy into the org. So, we just wanted a way for them to also be included, even if they couldn't all be interviewed, for the sake of- they had other people they want to interview for the article as well like administrators and teachers. So, yes, we advocated that we really wanted them to be in the photos, but they asked us to interview kind of at the end of the term, so there was no opportunity for them to be sent up for photos. So, they kind of just ended up pushing back the publication, we even took a zoom photo for them, because they were like, just take a zoom photo, and then they were like, it's not pretty, we're gonna push back the publication and we're going to come up and take photos of you in the winter. So it's kind of what they did. And we were able to get pictures of the whole collective, which was awesome. Yeah, and at the time, we also had picked up a new freshman, Rachel Kang, she was also in the photo. And she has continued to be part of the org since. She was kind of not as involved her freshman year, but then sophomore year became really involved. So yeah, and I think something I missed was, in the fall Winterim period, we also published a new kind of community letter. So something that we did once or twice, I think we published a community letter, which were updates about what we're doing. So one of our community letters was: here's where we're at. And I think that was in that winter. And we published one that was written by me, I think, and maybe edited by Daniel and Lily. And then that was just one of my jobs. I think one of my jobs was like trying to do the communications piece. So in the winter, after the New York Times article came out, we very quickly heard from administration who we had been in contact with for a while, but you're trying to reach out to- Like, we had our own strategy, where we were like, okay, when the article comes out, that's when we're going to email them, and then they're gonna like, maybe actually schedule a call with us, because now there's a little bit of pressure on it. And it was kind of crazy, because at the time, Dartmouth had not been mentioned in the New York Times for a very long time. And then there was this kind of like, slightly negative article out there as well.

And even for the article, though, we were very careful that- we had a strategy as well for that. I went to one of my mentors, and she kind of prepped us on the interviewing process, especially like, you know, we weren't really sure if this interviewer was a friend at that time. She definitely was. She was amazing. And it was definitely to help support us. But you never know, right? So she was like, you want to be careful what you say and how you say it, you want to leave doors open. So that was exactly the whole intention behind a lot of our quotes was like sharing our story, and leaving the door open and saying, “Well, Dartmouth, you can do this. And we know you can do this. And we'd love to see you support us, we'd love to work with you.” But behind the scenes, of course, there was a lot of frustration and anger towards the institution for just not providing these things beforehand. And for like, kind of telling us that these things were impossible was a lot of how we were hearing it for a while. So back to the winter, we met with the senior administration towards the end of the semester, or the quarter. And it was really interesting. Me and Sanjana, we prepared this document that was kind of going through all of the possible talking points and rebuttals that the administration would give to us and it was kind of like a mixture of my Model UN background and Sanjana's very thorough debate background coming together to create this document. And then we coached the collective on how to respond, we created a kind of an itinerary and prompts together, the collective did, and we discussed who would be saying what so the senior administration meeting was kind of like-

Also, I'm just giving the whole story, so feel free to interrupt me at any point. I'm just going through the first year. So, we go to the senior administration meeting and this is like my memory of it, it was all of the collective who was pictured. And then on top it plus [redacted] of course, and then we also had one of my other friends who's part of Spare Rib and one of the founders, she was kind of the scribe for us, she had some experience scribing. So we were like, you write, the rest of us need to focus on the conversation. So, she scribed pretty much the entire conversation between us and the senior administration. It started off with Lily giving this really heartbreaking, kind of like little monologue about Asian American Studies and why learning about Asian American Studies was so impactful to her. And just learning about herself and why she felt certain ways and who she was and how empowering it was. And it was very beautiful. We went into the conversation, kind of knowing that the emotional argument wasn't the one that was going to convince administration, if we could convince them at all. But we still wanted to have that because it was so important. And it was really her story that started the org. So that was really important to us that that was there. So she started off with that. And then it was me, Sanjana, and Anupam. And then I think Lily came back in with a question or two, or Daniel did. But it was like the three of us who were kind of grilling the admin about why we couldn't have this and listing our demands, and saying it very clearly and responding to the rebuttals. There was always this kind of, and this happened in our next conversation with admin as well in the late spring. But there was always this endless kind of idea that we didn't understand how programs and departments formed. There's always this idea that we didn't understand the endowment. There's always this idea that students are always asking for way more than is actually possible. But the truth is, everything is possible when you're the ones making the rules. And everything is possible when you're the ones who are familiar with all the loopholes. And you're the ones kind of outlining the kind of- how do I say- the priorities.

So for example, at the time the President was President Hanlon, and he had this kind of DEI, you can look it up. There's this like, DEI sort of initiative that was gonna be his last hurrah, his last contribution to the school before he exited, because he was also just announcing his retirement around that time as well. He just retired this past June, and yeah, so he was like, I have this DEI initiative. And we were like, put this in your DEI initiative. And he was like, in admin speak, just kind of saying, repeating to us that- sometimes when you're talking to admin, it just feels like they hear you, but they don't hear you. And the answers are not always 100% in response to what you say. So, I like remember, I said, put this in! And he was like, can you put this in? Can that be a thing that you do? And he was just like, we have this diversity initiative. And I was like, I know, and I've read it for the most part, or maybe I read it a few months later when it came out. Oh, yeah, a few months later. I was like, yeah, and can you put this in there? And it was funny, because it was just not in there in the preliminary plan. And a few months later, when we read it, there was a singular line about Asian American Studies. And I was like, maybe from that conversation that we had, but there were things that we were asking for in that meeting that were way more important. We wanted a tenure line, because we were kind of advised by our senior faculty, Eng-Beng, who told us we need a tenure line, this program will not grow without a tenure line. We need to find a way to do this, like we need someone who's permanent. And we readjusted our strategy since then. But that was the idea at the time. And a tenure line is very expensive. As you know, no one wants to give you a tenure line. The dean, later in another conversation, she's like, “Well, who should I take it from? Which department should I take it from to give it to you?” You know, and we were like, Okay.

Christina Huang 33:24
That's crazy.

Maanasi Shyno 33:24
So yeah, there's things like that, that were going on. I could probably send you our document, like what we talked about and things like that, and how the conversation went, but that was kind of it and then it was in like this office room we had scheduled because they originally had said like send two or three of your reps to President Hamlon's office. And we were like, No, we all need to be there. And we scheduled this huge room. All- basically like most of the senior administration had come to the meeting. And yeah, it was just interesting. It was fine. They're used to this sort of thing, talking to students, appeasing students, that was kind of the goal, and we kind of knew that we weren't going to get any promises out of it. But one thing that they said that they would do was release a statement showing their support for Asian Am Studies. They never did that. We kind of tried to follow up. But it wasn't 100% possible. It was not.

It was just another thing we were dealing with a lot in the end of the fall and in the winter was, a lot of us were having really intense burnout. Which I'm sure is relatable to you guys. And I think anytime you are organizing with friends, it is so challenging. Things just become muddled and confusing, and your work relationship versus your friendship, like all of these things can become so tricky. And there are a lot of hard conversations or miscommunications that were just really making it difficult for us to continue doing the work that we wanted to do. A lot of us needed a break in some sort of way. And some of us were not really sure if we could take a break when all of this stuff was happening. And we didn't know how to organize ourselves as such a small group to readjust the capacity and the goals and all these things like that was just so new to so many of us that it just was causing a lot of friction. So things were like not falling apart, per se, but definitely becoming very difficult. And we knew we needed to reorient so in the spring, we had a lot of conversations about reorienting our strategy, how do we start? We've taken this approach that's very top down. How do we start a bottom up approach? Because the truth is administration has all of these very specific strategies to say no, right? There's all these kind of things. We have our like own little phrases like chicken and the egg and all those sorts of things that I could tell you about in more detail later. But yeah, that was just like something we were talking about, like, Hey, how can we go bottom up? Because one of the main arguments is that “No one wants Asian American Studies except for you seven. There's not a huge demand and so we can't put money behind it.” Those are some things that were said to us, like literally directly said to us, like we can't invest in this because there is no demand, which is when we say chicken and egg, one of the ways that we use that phrase is like, Okay, well, you can't create a demand when people don't have access to these things to realize that they want it. That's very difficult when you're a college student, and you're trying to graduate and have fun and learn what your passion for life is like how are you supposed to also explore this when you only offer three classes a year? So yeah, anyways, we were like, We need to go bottom up, we need to build our base, we need to increase the number of students who are talking about this, who know about this, because our statement didn't do that to the level that we would have wished. So how do we do that? That was the conversations we were having a lot in the spring.

And yeah, and then we also had our most recent conversation with administration was following up with two of the deans and we talked about how this can be possible. And around this time, we were also supporting the English department in hiring two Asian American Studies hires. Originally, it was supposed to be just one. And we were just part of the student side of the process where usually it was just English majors. All of us were able to go and we had our own kind of notes about each person. We emailed and told them which person we'd liked. And we advocated for it. And, yeah, so they were able to offer two people in the end. And it's like a tenured position, a senior level position, which is just awesome. They're both currently going to be starting in the fall, I believe. And they're great. One is Dr. Jodi Kim, and the other is Anjuli Kolb. Professor Anjuli Kolb, we love both of them. They're really exciting. And Dr. Kim also has experience building Asian American Studies. So that will be very helpful in getting it started. So, the idea was that, you know, they're not in this new Asian Am program, because we don't have a program. We have a handful of classes. Dean Matt Delmont, is one of the deans that we worked with a lot. And he is, you know, AAAS professor, he cares about ethnic studies, but he's also an admin. So he has different responsibilities as well. And he's trying to like, scrape together this program. And a lot of another conversations we had in spring was like, who should lead this program? We wanted it to be Professor Eng-Beng because of his seniority and experience, but that wasn't necessarily what the administration wanted. And so, there's a lot of clashes between Eng-Beng as like a tenured professor who will always speak his mind, to be honest, and administration who doesn't always want to hear that and has different ideas on what can be done and how. So there's a lot of clashing there and so Dean Delmont had kind of scraped together a small group of people who he hoped would form the bases for the department or for the program. And all of us were kind of like, this is not the group. This is not the Asian American Studies group, because none of these professors are teaching Asian Am Studies, how are you going to do that? How are you going to do this with these professors? There was a bit of a stalemate, was what we called it, and then what was decided was, you know what? They’re going to wait until these two new professors come in, to have this real conversation because they can still teach Asian Am Studies classes, and they were hired a little bit on the pretense of they will help establish the program. But actually, administration did not make that a requirement for them. That is a kind of free labor that they are doing almost, they're like kind of being compensated, but not required. And they were actually told it was not required, which they told us and we were like, Oh, weird. Why would they tell you that? Because you're actually totally being hired to do that. Or we hope you were, that's what they told us, that you will help. And we hope you will. So that was the whole thing as well. And so that's kind of just where we were ending up.

I don't think we sent a community letter that semester, because we're just all so upset over like a lot of the conversations and the frustrations. But we were happy to hear that potentially, that a program would get put together. Even if amongst us and the faculty and admin, there were a little bit of disagreements of how it should happen. We were kind of a little bit happier to put that into someone else's hands. Because, as I've mentioned, we were just like, should this be where what we are doing as students? Is this our responsibility to be kind of organizing ourselves, organizing faculty, because faculty also didn't really have- there was not too many faculty. So it's hard for them to kind of organize as a front, some of them had different opinions and things. And also, administration, we were like, Is this our job to be in the weeds with them? Or is our job to advocate for what students want and spread awareness amongst students? And that's when we came up with this bottom up approach of like, okay, we need to build our base, we need to be doing other things, making sure that Asian Am people can come to visit Dartmouth to talk about their experiences and Asian Am Studies professors could come and lecture. We need to be doing those sorts of things, we need to create our own kind of teach-ins and workshops, and we need to just change our strategy completely. Because also, it's leading to insane burnout. And this is exactly what happened to pretty much every student org before us is like they were in the weeds way too much. And it was not what they should be doing. It was not their responsibility. And I'm sure you have this experience too. But the truth is, like administration and faculty, they all say that there's like a student's job- this is what student organizers should be doing. But then there's also all of these things that need to happen that aren't happening. And it kind of becomes almost your responsibility to know all of the details like, should we really have known all the details about how a program becomes a program and how it becomes a department? And also, like how all the nitty gritty of the endowment works? Maybe not. Maybe we didn't need to know that. But we also did need to know that because there was an expectation to know, to participate. So, we kind of started to set different ideas and goals for ourselves. And that was kind of where we're at the end of the spring.

And then nothing really happened with the summer, we took a break. And then we regrouped in the fall. And in the fall, we had a ton of new interests. We actually had people who told us they applied to Dartmouth because they saw the work that we were doing, I thought it was awesome. Some of them were under the wrong impression that we actually had Asian American Studies as well. And then were upset and then joined our group. So that was really interesting. But yeah, we had a much huger- like I think our group tripled in size. And we also lost the two seniors as well. But our group was kind of huge, full of freshmen and some sophomores now. And we just had to reorient what we were doing, to meet their interest and needs. But then on top of that, we had this new experience of having to organize such a large group as well. And that was really challenging. Doing like new member education, like that was really challenging. It kind of didn't really happen until the winter even. So, there were lots of new things and new projects. We did a teach-in in the fall. I wasn't as involved this past spring because I was kind of transitioning out of Dartmouth in general. So, it's kind of like letting things go and letting them do their own thing. The winter I think they did like a vigil for the recent shootings that happened that winter.

They did another teach-in in the spring, but a lot of this year was like learning and figuring out who they were and making friends. And it was just so different because we were definitely all friendly in DAASC the first year, but the second year, with all the new freshmen like this was one of their one of their communities. This was like their organizing space, but also like their friends, their communities. And they just really bonded. We have like a very small Asian American Pacific Islander room. A lot of places, a lot of other ethnic groups have houses, we have a room. And we call it the PAC room. And that's where we like did most of our meetings and things and they really just took over that space and made it like very homey. And they were there all the time. And they just grew a lot I think, learning. They came in very bright eyed. And then at the end of the year, they learned a lot about, you know, administration, about the kind of bureaucracy at Dartmouth and other student organizing and the culture of like leftist movements at Dartmouth. So, yeah, I think they learned a lot. And that was kind of the second year. I could say more, but I feel like the detail- the beginning stuff, a lot of that happened the first year, and the second year was a lot of this cultural building, and kind of new challenges. And definitely, the seniors, we had a bit of authority and stuff. But it really just became mostly me and Daniel Lin and Lily, in and out because she wasn't always on campus that senior year, kind of providing the advice and guidance. But there's so many other factors and people to consider, and when you're a collective, that's not how you organize, you know, it's not a hierarchical thing. So, yeah, like that was just different. So just really readjusting. And now we're gone. So they're kind of on their own now, and they're very capable, very wonderful people. And I'm really excited to see what they do. I think they finally figured out what the bottom up stuff should be, and like what they should be working on, and how much they can actually accomplish in a term which is always a learning experience. So yeah, okay, that's everything. I'm sorry that- I'm used to talking like about things like this at length, so that's why I just covered everything I could think of, but I'm realizing now that you probably could have asked questions, too. But yeah, let me know what you think.

Divya Aikat 46:42
That's perfect. That is such a comprehensive history. And we, I don't know, so many of the points that you make just really hit home, like the process that you went through, so much of the institutional pushback, the organizing with friends, that whole process is just- It's just amazing to have another student perspective and see how the Dartmouth group has grown so much, because we're still in our first year- there's only five of us right now. And the way that you told the story, and like, I don't know, it just really hit home. And that was really nice, the way that you outlined it.

Maanasi Shyno 47:19
I'm so glad. Yeah, like our underclassmen, they went to the Asian American Studies Conference in Long Beach, in the winter and the spring. And they also talked to some other student groups, and they're like "They're just like us!" [laughter] Yeah, it's all very similar. So I'm glad, yeah.

Divya Aikat 47:41
So in general, I thought it was really important how you highlighted the institutional response and how often they'll be dismissive or have like, you mentioned the chicken and the egg thing about where do things start and what does demand mean, when that isn't even recognized by the institution? And so separate from the institutional pushback, what was the community response that you heard while doing this work? Like, from friends, from faculty, just in general at Dartmouth? And then who were your allies? And then where did you face resistance?

Maanasi Shyno 48:24
That's such a great question. Um, I would definitely say the faculty were our strongest allies. At first we were so much in the learning stage of like, how to advocate for ourselves, what we wanted, that we kind of just took whatever the faculty told us as their advice of what we should advocate for and why. But then, as we learned things, we learned how to position ourselves uniquely as students to organize ourselves. So, the faculty were definitely some of our biggest allies. Someone else- like another group I didn't mention in my longer story that is also super, super helpful and super impactful was DAAPA, our Dartmouth Asian American Pacific Islander Alumni Association; they are amazing. They are probably the most powerful advocates in the whole multi stakeholder or organizing because they have graduated. So they have that specific power of having graduated, having influence over the college and in a different way that when you're a student, you have like a say, and then I think faculty probably have a lot less, because they are kind of bound to the college in a different way, as the college is their employer. I would say those two groups were our strongest allies. And DAAPA was always trying to establish a connection with us and check in and they were doing a bunch of work independent of us as well, like they were going and they still are going to administrators, talking to them, having termly conversations about building Asian American Studies. They created this endowed fund for Asian American Studies at Dartmouth, and they raised $250,000. So, all of these things are super amazing work that DAAPA is doing, and they're just trying to stay in contact with DAASC as well. And one of our '22s, who was part of 4A who I mentioned who was on that call, originally. She wasn't in DAASC, but her name is Connie. She was just an amazing mentor, did so much organizing at Dartmouth. And she became an alum, and she was doing DAAPA work, connecting to us and stuff and trying to establish that connection. So, they're definitely a huge ally. And the Dartmouth women's alumni group also did a panel with me and Lily in it about Asian American Studies. So, the alumni have definitely been super helpful. Faculty have been helpful in terms of like, helping us understand how this stuff works. And this was faculty who were not necessarily just Asian Am faculty. The LALACS senior faculty were so helpful as well. One of them explained the entire process of how a program becomes a program and how a program becomes a department to Lily and Sanjana. And I think that took maybe two hours to explain. And she spent that time with us. So, I think I would definitely say that they've been the most helpful movement. And the faculty were just really strong supporters in the sense of like, they were always saying, this is so amazing that you're doing this. This is incredible, this is so powerful, and they were just always trying to find a way to like, bring people to us who would be able to inspire us, you know, like with David Eng especially, that was such an inspiring conversation. And he was really helpful in giving us some language that we really needed at that time, in creating our strategy. So yeah, they were the ones who kind of helped us have that specific conversation with him in particular, you know, so that was definitely a huge part.

Students were also super supportive and responsive. You know, we did get a lot of signatures. We did, some canvassing as well. We did canvassing on Parents Weekend. So a bunch of parents signed our petition. You know, I think a lot of people heard about our petition that way. We have like some shifts where we were standing on corners and being like, "Will you sign this?" So, you know, student response was definitely positive. But as with most things at any university, there are times when those things are really well known. And then that movement kind of gets a little drowned out by the new thing that's happening. You need to be really strong and consistent and powerful in that way to advocate like that. You need to have such a strong base to have a consistent awareness and advocacy for your org. So, I definitely think that was a part that was hard for us. And so, this kind of new strategy that they've been cooking up in the last few months, a big goal of that is to build this student base because we had great support from admin, or from faculty and from alumni. But other students didn't always know what we were doing once the petition hype kind of died down a bit. And even then, people sign things without reading them. And all the nuance is in the petition. It's not very long, it's like maybe four pages, but people wouldn't always have read that nuance, and that was very important. So yeah, I would say student response was definitely positive, especially from people we knew. And people definitely knew about DAASC and the work we were doing, but not necessarily. I think the stuff that we've done that's more student facing in the last year has definitely increased how much people know about us and who we are. And people, other students, would come up to us, especially upperclassmen would come up to us and say, like, “I'm so glad you're doing this. I wish that this started earlier, I would have been involved.” That kind of thing. I've heard that from so many '22s and '23s.

In the fall, there was kind of an incident of a hate crime at Dartmouth. And it was against a South Asian student, an international student, you can read about it online if you look it up. But we wanted to do a teach-in about this because one of our members was like, I can't believe no one's saying anything about this. And the school actually didn't tell us it was a hate crime even though slurs were yelled at the student. Basically, the nature of it was like, something was thrown at the student and slurs were said. And so we were just like, how could you not tell us? Because obviously, you know, they sent this email out being like, yeah, there's this incident of violence against a student, like, stay vigilant, but they didn't say who should stay vigilant. Obviously, the South Asian students probably should stay more vigilant of this person who was wandering around campus, you know, being violent towards South Asian students. So I don't know why they didn't tell us that. And they didn't tell us for a long time, actually. Our student newspaper was the first one to put out that this was what happened. And so, the South Asian students on campus, were just like, Why? Why would you not tell us what happened? Maybe there's some rules, but I think it's just part of this longer history, that Dartmouth has of pretending like violence doesn't happen towards POC, or specifically towards Asians. So we did a teach-in about the history of kind of racism towards Asians, and specifically the history of hate crime at Dartmouth towards Asians and there were things to talk about. So we did that. And like upperclassmen would come like- a lot of people came to that. I think, like 50 something students came to that event. And they were like, Oh, my God, I didn't know this happened. I didn't know this existed. I didn't even know this stuff happened to Asian students at Dartmouth until the D article came out. So, I'm so glad to learn more and that's why I came to this. So yeah, so I think that and then we did the vigil, and that a lot of people cane to the vigil, probably in the hundreds came to the vigil. And so, an awareness of our group was raised by that, by the change in what we're doing. And I would definitely say people are very supportive and positive in response, but of course, that's not everyone. People still have that mentality that these things don't happen to Asian students, that Asians are all super privileged and don't need to be studied or talked about in this way. And that sentiment is definitely alive and well, at Dartmouth. It's not erased by the work that we're doing. So yeah, that's what I would say to your question.

Christina Huang 57:42
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. I'm so sorry that happened on campus. That's awful. And the way that Dartmouth was trying to cover it up is even worse. So, can you tell us a little about your own experiences? And can you explain a little bit about your visibility or invisibility of your South Asian identity?

Maanasi Shyno 58:00
Yeah, sure. Do you mean specifically within DAASC and my organizing work or just like at large?

Christina Huang 58:09
Um, both would be really helpful. Like, how have you experienced it in your upbringing, but also in your activism?

Maanasi Shyno 58:15
Yeah, sure. I guess, in terms of my upbringing, I think I grew up in a pretty diverse part of LA. And predominantly a lot of Asian people live here, not just East Asian, but also a lot of South Asians. And I think I grew up in communities where, especially like, in my specific community, there were South Asians around and I think that was really helpful for my family to help understand how the education system works in our area, what the best tips are and I think definitely, that sort of support was something that helped me get into the colleges that I got into. And I think when I was growing up because of that I wasn't as acutely aware of how my race was impacting my experiences to the degree that I am now. I definitely knew that things were different for me versus other people, especially even other people of color. Because I came to the United States when I was three, so I was an immigrant. And that was a very particular identity, there were things that other people could experience in ways that I couldn't experience them, or things that would just happen that not everyone had to deal with. For example, when one of my family members was really sick, we had to go to India. And we had to get the specific paperwork to go to India. And I had to skip out on this big eighth grade day that we were all doing, even though the day before I had done so much work to prepare for that day. It was an emergency. So, I just had to skip and spend the entire day and trying to get that paper. And I was like really young. So, I like definitely knew, my race and my ethnicity was impacting who I was, especially with a lot of South Asians being on the H-1B visa. But I wasn't really thinking about it too much.

At that time, I was developing my gender lens a lot more. So, when I'd have interactions with male supervisors or adults in my life, I would always see it as this is happening to me because I'm a woman, and this is a gender dynamic. And that was so true. But when I really reflect on my experiences, it was also happening because I was a brown woman, you know what I mean? So there are a lot of things that I was definitely acutely aware of growing up. And my sister especially was having a lot of these moments where people- a lot of microaggressions with her in a way that I don't really remember if that happened to me, but I just very distinctly remember like people saying things to her, you know, all the traditional stuff about like, her lunch and I don't know, I also remember the impact of 9/11, like those sorts of things and safety, how I felt that in my own life. But I don't think that people talk about that. So I grew up in this way, where I was thinking about things a lot through a gendered lens. And I was definitely acutely aware of who I was as a South Asian because I grew up as an immigrant. And I grew up in immigrant communities where everyone I knew was a child of immigrants. Like no one, I really knew, had parents who were born here or really went to school here or anything like that. So, I was definitely acutely aware of my race in that way. But I didn't really think so much about how it impacted me, or how my narratives were invisibilized in the larger community, and- not in my larger community, in society at large.

I think I started to think more about it in college, definitely after I started engaging in Asian American Studies, because I think that is what Asian American Studies does for you. It can open you up to thinking about things in a different way. It can open you up to understanding all of those minor feelings about being invisibilized, and why certain tropes don't work for you, but are so popular in society. And I think that's when I first really started to think about it. I took this as I mentioned before, I took this class called Bodies and Technologies in Asian American Pop Culture. And it was a class in which I definitely was exposed to a lot of media and had to think about a lot of media and media representation, which I think is really powerful in Asian American Studies, because it's kind of like something that's super accessible. And I noticed that a lot of the curriculum in other Asian American Studies class, this was probably the class that had the most South, Southeast Asian curriculum. And I talked to my professor about it. And I was telling her, I mean, in your class we looked at Never Have I Ever and we read about that new comic that came out that's slipping my mind. But the one with like the Muslim superhero, we like read the first version of it in class. And she was like, Yeah, because I had to teach the class in a media studies way. So, we had to go by method. And I didn't get to really go by community group. And so, I did my best, but that's probably what's happening in all your other classes. And I thought, okay, yeah, like, that's true. But the more I engaged in, specifically South Asian American Studies, the more I kind of realized that wasn't true, necessarily. Maybe it was true for her class. And I definitely believed that from her, because there was definitely a variety.

But I took another class where, I don't want to call out my professor, because it was still a lovely class. And I still appreciate that professor. But I just felt there could have been more done. The only book we read that was South- we read like six books. And the only book we read that was South Asian focused, it just felt like it was the most inaccessible book for us to read at that stage. The other ones were storybooks, with engaging plots, and this was probably a much more dense theory book about photography. And I chose that book for my presentation, because I wanted to engage in South Asian America. And even I, who wanted to read that book, I was having such a difficult time reading it. So I think when I talked to my professor and my class, about the last unit in our class, where we got to kind of choose what we wanted to learn, it was so interesting, because there was maybe like three other, there's definitely two other South Asians in the class. And then there was like, a handful of East Asians, and everyone else was of a different ethnicity. It was a very small seminar class. And for some reason, even though I was like, Guys, let's read like an Afghani poet, let's read like other brown writers and stuff, just because we haven't engaged with that as much. And even though the class was centered around Asian Am theory, I thought, you know what, there's so much writing by different people, there's so much to engage with, why don't we choose something specifically for this reason, and know that it will still bring us great value in thinking about theory. And people were just so not interested in that for some reason. And even the brown people who were in my class, I just felt like, it wasn't specifically an interest. And I was just really surprised by that, because I was personally at that time especially craving this and I felt like, because I had done a South Asian American independent study with my professor at the term before, I was just thinking, there's so much here that can be said, and for some reason, like it's not being chosen. And so these are moments where I felt particularly invisibilized.

There was this experience where that same professor forgot my name, but remembered Lily's name, when- not like, forgot my name, I'm sorry. Like when we were getting introduced in class, didn't remember that he knew me, and introduced my partner, Lily, as the founder of DAASC when I was sitting right next to her. And, you know, I think that in this moment, she did this- this is exactly what she should have done. And I'm so happy to say that she did that. But she was like, Oh, yeah. And this is Maanasi. Like kind of pre did my intro and she was like, Maanasi also started DAASC with me. And my professor, kind of just like, “Oh, yeah.” But we had met on Zoom several times, I had definitely talked to him directly, as somebody who was leading the group and asking questions. So it was very interesting how I was just forgotten in that way, or there was another time when we were talking to the same professor about which English professor we should recommend as DAASC in our hiring process for the English hires, and knowing that this would not create huge impact for whoever we said, but we really liked this one South Asian professor, we felt like she connected with us the most. And it wasn't necessarily about her being South Asian, but we loved that she was because there was no South Asian Americanist at Dartmouth; it was just one Asian Americanist. So, you know, that was just all we had anyway. So we're like, oh, this would be great for us. And we loved her. So, let's recommend her and our professor was like, Yeah, unfortunately we have to think about strategy too, and she doesn't actually have experience building a program. So maybe it'd be best if we go with someone else, and actually I was running to meetings. So, I had to, hop off that call and was across campus. And all my friends in DAASC were texting me being like, can you just hop back on the call? You're about to run into somebody- like you're in the library, so and so is sitting here, can you just come back in and say your piece, because we have told the professor that we want to recommend this person, but they're like really discouraging us from doing it. And I think you should just say your piece. And so I got on. And I was like, Well, I think for me, it's so impactful for this to be a South Asian person. And I don't know how else to say that. Like, I think that what we need is definitely to have someone who can build programs. But we also need somebody who is just a good ally to students, and makes people want to take these classes and makes people feel seen. And that is something that is another reason that we want Asian American Studies, and the professor was kind of like, I know, but we can't really choose based off of that. And that was another moment where I just kind of felt like, damn. Sometimes, the visibility aspect just so impacts how you feel. But it can't necessarily always impact your strategy. And that's like another kind of point of invisibilization.

I'll tell one more story about school, and how these things made me feel. But this happened most recently in the spring. And again, this was no one's fault. I want to say that. I think it's important to say, this is why I'm gonna say it. I want to say that I have no animosity towards any of my peers, like, none of these things happened because of any particular person. And no one was intentionally engaging in any of these dynamics. This is just stuff that happens in Asian American spaces because of who gets to be Asian American, and who is seen as Asian American. And it's probably the most potent example I have of how I felt and how other people were feeling in our space. I've already said this. But in the first year of DAASC, there were three of us who were South Asian: me, Anupam, and Sanjana. And we did a lot of work. But I don't think I would say that we did much more work than anyone else. Although I think that we did some very key work at specific times. And I don't know if those dynamics were present at those periods, that I didn't always feel like they weren't, I think it's something I'd say. And I again, I would say that this is happening because this stuff happens, because this is like part of Asian organizing. We're not monolithic, there is difference to organize, against- like kind of through. And that is something very challenging for a group of people who have not engaged in Asian Am organizing, who are just coming in and also just learning constantly about their racial identity and their place on campus. Like in a predominantly white institution, there's just so much that we relate over that it's sometimes hard to think about what might be causing friction or differences, you know what I'm saying?

So, this past spring, as I mentioned, I wasn't as involved, but I was definitely kind of lurking on the Slack, and honestly, still kind of mentoring a bunch of the underclassmen and freshmen specifically. So they would reach out to me about: How do you submit this proposal? And I would still help out even though I wasn't going to meetings at the time. And there was this article that I was reached out to be interviewed for the alumni magazine. And like this is tea. But I didn't know if I should be in the article because I was already the New York Times article. And I was already kind of on several panels. And I had gotten my moment in the spotlight, I had told my story. I didn't need to be on the alumni magazine, as I'm literally about to leave Dartmouth. I was like, I need this to be somebody who is new, who has fresh ideas, but also can tell our story and our history. So, I reached out in our Discord and said, Hey, guys, but this is happening, who wants to do this? But it was winter break, and no one's really responding. And Daniel also had gotten this email and he had responded already. And I actually was going to tell him, maybe you should do it because he was kind of preparing to have this Asian Am History class, not history class, it was kind of an archival going through all the Dartmouth archives class. And he had really pioneered that. So, I thought, you know, you should have a moment to talk about it. So like super, super important work. And it's connected to our org. So, you know, but he'd already been reached out to actually and I didn't know that. So, he'd already said yes. So, he told me I should say yes too because no one in our group was saying that they were interested. Then I tentatively like emailed them back and was like, I would love to, when are you thinking? But I was maybe like five days late to this email. They never emailed me back, and I never thought about it, I just thought maybe they dropped the article. Maybe they reached out to some of our other members. And nobody's said anything yet. But actually, I think they had decided to reorient the article a little bit to be more about Daniel's class. And for some reason, they had reached out to a few other people. But for some reason, all of the interviewees ended up being East Asian. And this was very interesting, because as I mentioned, me, Sanjana and Anupam are all really involved and Anupam had graduated. So that kind of made sense. But, you know, Sanjana never got an email. And there were also a bunch of other Southeast Asians in our group, who could have been interviewed, in addition. There was a handful of Southeast and South Asian students in the class that they were writing an article about, in Daniel's class. So, I don't really know what happened or why. And I'm not trying to point any fingers. But they didn't interview any South Asians and or Southeast Asians. And when it came down to taking photos for the article, they asked one of our members to reach out to all of the South and Southeast Asians in our group chat and ask to be in the photoshoot because they just felt like it wasn't representative of Dartmouth's Asian population. And I really respect that because it wasn't, right to take just the photos of the interviewers. It wasn't. But it wasn't representative, the article wasn't necessarily representative of who was doing the work either. Right? And so that was something that was really troubling for me, because it just felt like a moment of tokenization that maybe it was unintentional.

Maybe there were a lot of things to kind of explain away but doesn't matter because it still made me and other people feel bad. And both me and Sanjana kind of were like, No, thank you. And I ended up writing a bit of like a chunky email to other students in DAASC, they didn't send it to the photographer, or the author of the article. But I said, “You know what… I never heard you guys talking about this article when I was at meetings, I never saw you communicate about it. Those of you who said yes to like interviewing, I'm not saying like you did anything wrong. But I am saying that, as East Asians who have a little bit more visibility in these spaces, it's your responsibility to speak up and say, ‘Hey, I'm interviewing for this, is anyone else interested?’ It's always your job to bring up the group's public communication, it's always your job to bring that up and showcase that you are doing that in solidarity, you know, how much visibility you get, and how much visibility your peers get, and you want to kind of level those like those inequities. That is what you do.” And I said, “This is just for future thought. You don't have to do anything. But I'm telling you this now.” And I think they like were like thinking about this, and they're like, What should we do? Now that I've said this to those three of them who were interviewed, including Daniel, and they were like, Okay, maybe we'll reach out and see if any of the South or Southeast Asians want to be interviewed. That did not pan out for some reason. But they did try. And I don't know, I think it was just largely because the article's already written that this time that they asked for the photos. And they did eventually get some other people were not in DAASC to be in the photos. I don't know, maybe they were in the class, maybe their friends, I don't know. But they did get some diversity in the photos. And I'm happy for DAASC because I think it was a win to be in the alumni magazine. And it made the first page which is awesome. I'm never against the publicity element, I think, or the work that we're doing should always be uplifted. And I don't know how many times are Asian Americans featured on the alumni magazine, I have no idea, so I don't want to like say anything bad about it. But I do think that whole experience of that happening was a moment where South Asians and Southeast Asians felt a little friction in the group, because why weren't they told about this? Why was it only when photos were being taken, that other people were like, Oh, by the way, we interviewed for this, and you totally could have been in the interview. But we just didn't tell you because we didn't think of it.

You know, when I compare that to what Lily did in the classroom, where she literally was like "And Maanasi was here too and Maanasi was doing so much work." I think that is like a big difference. And I think that's so important, you know, to be able to acknowledge the differences in the work being done. So, I guess overall through my three different stories about my experiences at Dartmouth and kind of being in Asian spaces and not always feeling necessarily the most, I guess, visible even though I'm doing visibility work all the time. I think I would just say that a lot of South Asians, I know have a little bit of a difficulty calling themselves Asian American. It doesn't feel right all the time, it feels like a different experience. But when I look at, you know, the histories of Asian people in our country and like different ethnicities, there's so many parallels between things like the model minority myth, and those sorts of elements that there's so much for us to organize together for. And yet, there's also so many differences that need to be acknowledged. And I think that's kind of what creates this unique challenge of organizing under this Asian American umbrella. Asian American was always supposed to be a very political term; it was never supposed to become this like ethnic group term. Because it isn't, you know. Or like a racial term. It was not really supposed to be that. It was supposed to be a front through which to organize together. And I think if we think about that more, we can kind of combat this invisibility, visibility, dynamics that happen within our spaces. But yeah, that's kind of my thoughts. I thought that was very long winded, because I think I didn't know what to- I read your questions ahead of time. But I still didn't get a chance to think about everything. So, you should definitely cut out what parts of that makes sense for your question.

Christina Huang 1:19:10
No, I think your answer was very thorough. And I really appreciate the vulnerability and how much you're talking about this, because as an East Asian myself, I see it happen in our space. And it makes me want to think about my- like, yes, Asian Americans are not very visible, but I have more visibility than Southeast Asians and South Asians. And I think what you're telling me is like true leadership, where you're able to say, hey, looking for other people to amplify their voices, but also like calling out behaviors and being like, I know this is not what you intended. But these are the consequences. And I think I really admire you for that. Like that's really good leadership, that I'm listening to you. And I'm hoping that whoever takes on your roles as you're mentoring students can continue that work that you've started. And I think that's the foundation of like an amazing organization.

Maanasi Shyno 1:19:59
Yeah, thanks Christina.

Christina Huang 1:20:02
I have another question. Zooming out, you've done so much work, you just said you got DAASC in the alumni magazine, and you started a whole program and you're mentoring students now. Zooming out, what does it mean for you to be part of this Asian American Studies movement as a whole?

Maanasi Shyno 1:20:24
What does it mean?

Christina Huang 1:20:26
Yeah, what does it mean to you?

Maanasi Shyno 1:20:27
Um, you know, sometimes when I talk about this, I talk about how I mentioned this already in the interview, but I started doing this work, because I really cared about my friend, Lily. And I really cared about what she was excited and interested about. And she just has this way of speaking about something that can get you so excited. And I think in so many ways, I started doing this work, because I wanted to be there for her and show her that you can do so much when you're like with the right people because I was feeling that so strongly in other organizing spaces I was a part of it was. It was like magic in so many ways. And I just wanted that to happen for her too. And I felt like I had a skillset that I could bring to the table. But it didn't feel like I was doing it for me in the very beginning. And it was only when I was really like taking the first Asian American Studies class that I really started to think about how it was for me and for my sister, and for everyone else after us, that I was doing this work as well. That summer that I took that class, for my final, I did a podcast, where I talked to my little sister about the first season of Never Have I Ever. And it's a very raw unedited podcast, which is very scripted and not great. But I think something- I've definitely talked to so many people about that specific conversation I had with her. Because it was just one of the first times that we were really talking about our experiences growing up in America. And like all of our thoughts about it. We had definitely had the conversations before but it wasn't in this kind of deep sense of how it impacts us. And we're talking about media representation, right? So as I said, it's very accessible. It's something to connect to, and it was something my sister was particularly excited about. So we're talking about legibility, and kind of how South Asian narratives aren't almost always the most legible narratives and how they need to be kind of portrayed in this specific way of like, the self-hating Indian, that kind of dynamic, or the brown girl who definitely wants to get with the white guy and kind of those tropes that would show up in Mindy Kaling shows, and we're just talking about it. And my sister said something like, you know, I think we're gonna see a lot more South Asians being leads and main characters coming forward. And I was like, come on, this is a one-time thing. This is being done because it's Mindy Kaling and she wants to make a show about brown girls. And she's been doing it for forever. You know, this is just what it is and Never Have I Ever is supposed to be exactly about us. We grew up in the valley. We did Model UN, like we were those girls, but the main character's obviously really different. And we talked about that, as well. And what it means to make a show that is really about us, you know. That as much as we felt like Never Have I Ever was about us, it was also totally not about us. And those sorts of things. We were just talking about it. And I don't know, it was just such an exciting conversation.

And I was just thinking about how we need Asian American Studies for these reasons. So we can talk about why our stories aren’t legible. Why do we have these experiences? And why are they so hard for other people to understand? And you know, those sorts of things. And I think over time, I started to really see the work I was doing as like, learning that I was a subject worth studying and actually studying my experiences, and thinking about how that can kind of shape the work I do, or how I communicate who I am in certain spaces, for sure. And I was really pleasantly surprised in the fall when we had our membership grow a lot. And as I mentioned, people told us that they joined specifically because there was no Asian American Studies program, or they came to Dartmouth and applied to Dartmouth in part because they were reading about the work we were doing and were excited about. It oftentimes felt like a little- we were kind of little fish, you know, and I think that's what it has meant for me to be part of this work. It's been eye opening. And it's been enlightening in terms of how you can impact other people. The importance of this work, I think, for myself and for my peers and what you can, I don't know, just continuing to discover what you can do when you struggle for something together in community. And I think that has been really important to me. It's definitely shaped how I think about social impact work, how I think about organizing, and definitely like what I want to continue doing.

I'm moving to the Bay in a couple of weeks, actually, for work. And I'm really excited about it. And one of the reasons that I was really excited about the Bay, when I finally settled on it was there's a lot of Asian organizing in the Bay, and there's a lot of South Asian organizing in the Bay. And that's something that for so long was unfathomable to me, just because a lot of the organizing spaces I was a part of, I might have been one of the only South Asians, you know. I was almost always the oldest South Asian. And I never felt like I got a chance to learn from other people who had my experience in that way. You know? I definitely hold a lot of my South Asian mentors really close. They weren't always from these spaces; they might have been from my sorority or something like that. And so, I'm really excited about going into spaces where I can continue learning, as somebody who is young and new to organizing in so many ways, like, I've only kind of been doing it in the school setting. And that's very different than doing it in the city on different issues. And so, I'm really excited about pursuing that.

And I think the reason I'm excited is because I've seen what this work has meant to me. And I think there are so many issues to struggle for, when it comes to struggling for the issues of Asian Am people. So, yeah, it's just definitely different, because I don't know, in so many ways struggling for ethnic studies is kind of struggling in the ivory tower. And the reason that we struggle for ethnic studies is for people to understand what real issues exist in the world and how people are being impacted. And just to get a better understanding of how race operates, and how it is so intertwined with other things like gender and class. That's the reason we have ethnic studies. That's why it's important. But it's not the only important thing. And in so many ways it's kind of just supposed to open your eyes to everything else that people are struggling with. So yeah, like I'm excited to just kind of move into a space where I'm doing more visibility work, but in different ways. We're doing mutual aid work in different ways. So yeah, I guess I don't know if I have a great answer to that question of what has it meant to me and what does it mean to me? Other than it has meant a lot. And it's meant a lot for people I've been with.

Christina Huang 1:27:36
Yeah. Thank you so much for that response. I'm excited for you to move to the Bay Area. There's so much exciting stuff happening on the West Coast. And I'm a little bit jealous but- I think, yeah, it must mean a lot because you were spearheading these movements. And now you get to step back and like actually figure out like how people are doing it. And I think you've made a really interesting point. I've been talking about lately is that when you're organizing at a PWI, or higher education, it kind of loses that community need and instead tries to satisfy the higher education need of academia and papers and research and that stuff, as opposed to like, how do we make sure that people in our community are vaccinated and they get the things are translated in in the right languages and things like that, where there's a community. But I am so glad that I could have the privilege to come here and speak with you and hear about where it all started, where you are now, and where you're going. You have a bright future, and I'm so excited to get you into the archives.

Maanasi Shyno 1:28:46
Yay, I'm so excited and thank you so much.