Below are some reflections on my time at Scripps College: a list of grievances that I would like the Scripps community to be mindful of, a list of wonderful related experiences I\u2019ve had at this college to show my gratitude for my four years here, and a list of dreams and ways to resolve issues on this campus.<\/p>\n
Not-so-fun times at Scripps College:<\/em><\/p>\n – When I realized that this isn\u2019t public school anymore<\/p>\n – When I showed up at the Dean\u2019s Dessert during orientation and everyone but me and the people I was with were wearing skirts*<\/p>\n – When I attended a FAMILY-hosted event during orientation with two students I\u2019d just met and they started laughing when they realized what FAMILY was an organization for<\/p>\n – When I realized I wasn\u2019t just the token Asian girl in my Core I section, but that all future western-centered humanities classes would have those demographics<\/p>\n – When I realized that my classmates were not going to admit to the existence of homophobia, racism, or classism in their families, and that if I did, I would be outed as not having one of the majority\u2019s whitepseudoliberal families<\/p>\n – When I made a table setting of hors d’oeuvres as an art project and it was interpreted as sushi and a \u201cvery interesting representation of my cultural background\u201d<\/p>\n – When I made a photoreal self portrait of myself and it was described as looking like Pocahontas. Hadn\u2019t heard that one in a while!<\/p>\n – When I was told that wasn\u2019t my friend afraid of getting that haircut because \u201cpeople might think she was a lesbian?\u201d<\/p>\n – When I was told that my friend\u2019s boobs were so weird and small<\/p>\n – When I realized that even though I came from a predominantly white town with tons of white friends, none of my Scripps friends are really white<\/p>\n – When I realized that, here, yoga and the gym* are the standard and accepted ways to exercise (not playing catch, or shooting hoops – and that if we wanted to do that, we\u2019d have to go to Mudd\u2019s courts or Walker Beach), despite the fact that our President once proudly described our class as having played a multitude of sports on our applications<\/p>\n – Trying to conform to the party attire<\/p>\n – When I realized that despite looking like a miniskirt clone like all the other white women at parties*, only non-white men dance with me<\/p>\n – When I realized that when a white man finally danced with me, he had a competition with his friend to see how many Asian girls he could hook up with<\/p>\n – That guy who looked me in the eye and smirked while he grabbed my ass on the dancefloor as he was dancing with some other woman<\/p>\n *note: I am not trying to bash skirts (neither sundresses nor those foldover stretchy miniskirts that were in vogue for a while), yoga, or the gym. \u00a0Rather, I want to comment that they are norms and standards to conform to, here.<\/em><\/p>\n Good times at Scripps College:<\/em><\/p>\n – Realizing how many motivated people I meet and the privileges I get from attending a small, private college<\/p>\n – Exploring the Inland Empire – from the liquor stores off of the 1st street bike path to Montclair Mall to food in Rowland Heights<\/p>\n – The Metrolink and finding peace exploring Downtown LA and Santa Barbara<\/p>\n – Finding friends who will go out of their way to get pho, all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ, and good boba with me<\/p>\n – Carpooling to 99 Ranch with Dean Lee to make some spring break home cooking<\/p>\n – Finding incredible amounts of wisdom and strength in my peers; finding peers who make the incredible effort to educate me and call me out on racism, classism, and sexism; finding solidarity in the face of ignorance<\/p>\n – Staying up way late on Sunday nights with Asian American Student Union members, way past the end of the meeting time; documentary night and workshops at SCORE; visiting Caf\u00e9 con Leche<\/p>\n – Realizing that I can go to dances for myself, and not just to attract a dance partner; realizing that Pub can be a place to bust out my sneakers, pants, t-shirt (sans bra), hoop earrings, and pleasantly tipsy dance moves<\/p>\n – Realizing that dance parties don\u2019t just come in the midst of sweaty crowds of grinding white couples<\/p>\n – Realizing allyship can happen<\/p>\n – Having my politicized artwork be understood by men and white men I\u2019ve slept with<\/p>\n – Realizing that I have people around me who will accept me for my nonwhite self, my bougie self, my menscargoshortswearing self, all of my selves<\/p>\n What I\u2019d like from Scripps College in the future:<\/em><\/p>\n – For white students, and for students of color who feel like they don\u2019t need support, to actually make a real attempt to get to know SCORE, and to go to events on class, microaggression, white privilege, etc. We can all learn from these events, even if we don\u2019t need the support of SCORE. It should be a priority for all of us to make this campus a better place for everyone and to learn how to not be a douchebag to other people, to put it quite bluntly. It should be a priority to learn about how we are privileged in this world (and ALL of us are, starting with the fact that we go to Scripps College), and to be critical of these privileges.<\/p>\n – To try and reach out to your peers – all of them. There are some people who feel uncomfortable at Scripps: what are you doing to make them feel more comfortable here? Please take notice of who you eat lunch with. Do you sit with any students of color? Do you sit with students of different class backgrounds? At the average party you go to at CMC, how many people of color do you interact with? \u00a0And I don\u2019t mean your few assimilated Asian friends or that one black guy you\u2019re interested in.<\/p>\n – Think about how you view the city of Pomona and the people who live there.<\/p>\n – In classrooms, think about what you\u2019re saying before you say it: think about how you might alienate people with your statements. Think about if you are assuming that your experience is universal. We are not all white, we are not all rich, we are not all skinny.<\/p>\n – Think about how classrooms operate, where the power is in a classroom, and who might be silenced in a classroom. Think about how other people have different manners and speeds of thinking and expressing. On occasion, I forget that my loud voice, and my tendency to feel entitled to speak frequently, silences my fellow members of the Asian American Student Union. Because I feel entitled to be loud, and to speak frequently, we miss out on so many other important voices in the room. It is amazing to see what happens when you sit back, for once, and allow those other voices to be heard. \u00a0Think about how you might have been brought up to feel this sense of entitlement, and how others are disempowered because of this.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Below are some reflections on my time at Scripps College: a list of grievances that I would like the Scripps community to be mindful of, a list of wonderful related experiences I\u2019ve had at this college to show my gratitude for my four years here, and a list of dreams and ways to resolve issues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}