BY JONATHAN EMONT

In print | Published November 20, 2008

Signaling its desire for more expansive community outreach, the Swarthmore Asian Organization has teamed up with Han and Deshi for the first segment of “High School Conversations.” Scheduled for this Saturday, the organizers of “High School Conversations” are bringing local Asian high school students to Swarthmore to educate them about the college application process, to begin a mentoring program and to discuss identity issues regarding the students’ ethnicities.

The students participating in the program attend Bodine High School for International Affairs, a magnet school in the Philadelphia area where many of them are active in the school’s Asian Club. As primarily second-generation immigrants from working class backgrounds, most of the students are oblivious to the complexities of the college application process.

Gina Hart ’01, leader of the high school Asian Club and “High School Conversations” project coordinator, said, “What prevents my students from applying to schools like Swarthmore is not their lack of ability but their lack of knowledge about how to apply to schools like Swarthmore. Their perception of college is mainly shaped by television.”

In preparation for Saturday’s event, Professor of History Sonia Lee visited Bodine with a contingent of SAO members. Of the students she met, Professor Lee said, “They were a group of very self-motivated students, but when I spoke to them about college, they had no clue.”

The day’s focus is not only on college, however. Organizers hope to establish a mentoring program pairing self-identified Asian Swarthmore students with their local high school counterparts. Arthur Chyan ’10, SAO president, said Swarthmore students have a lot to teach their assigned students — and vice-versa. “We’re expecting a reciprocal learning process. Our goal is to interact collaboratively.”

Most of the Swarthmore students come from a middle and upper-middle class background, and are therefore likely to be wealthier than the students with whom they’re paired. “We’re hoping this will make for interesting discussions about Asian identity,” Chyan said. Sonia Lee said discussions with Asian students had led her to conclude, “Among Asian students there is no coherent understanding about who they are.” She hoped discussions between students of different income levels would “help make things clearer.”

The students will arrive at Swarthmore on Saturday morning. After taking a campus tour and eating at Sharples, they will attend a presentation by Rafael Zapata, director of the Intercultural Center, on scholarship opportunities for low-income students. Then, Andrea Pien ’08, a worker in the Admissions Office, will give a talk on both the application process in general and applying to Swarthmore in particular. “Underserved communities have misconceptions about college admissions,” Pien said. “We’ll do everything we can to make the process seem clearer.” After Pien’s half-hour long presentation, the visiting high school students will present for an hour about the conditions that affect their communities and about negotiating their Asian identities in a school that has very few Asians and, according to Gina Hart, not a single Asian teacher.

Their presentation will be followed by an equally long presentation by Swarthmore students about their experiences at Swarthmore and about the community involvement they hope to work at with the high school students. The presentation by Swarthmore students will take the form of a panel discussion and the local high school students will be invited to ask questions of the Swarthmore students.

The students at Bodine High School were admitted based on an entrance exam, and the school is among the most prestigious high schools in Philadelphia. In the end, according to Chyan, the vast majority of the students who will visit Swarthmore will go on to attend college. Even though some of the high school students are in ninth grade, and may not have even begun to think about college, Chyan said that this would be a good opportunity to teach the young students about the college application process. “It will provide a nice introduction,” Chyan said. He had special hopes that the younger students would benefit from the mentoring program. “We’re really hoping for this to be sustainable. We’re hoping to maintain the program, to continue working with these students.”

The effort to work with high school students is indicative of SAO’s greater efforts to expand outreach into the surrounding communities. Chyan said, “The project on a whole is an effort to do more community outreach as an organization.” The group plans to work with the Asian community in Philadelphia to prevent the building of a Foxwoods Casino near Chinatown, citing studies that have shown Asian-Americans to be more prone to gambling addictions than Americans at large.

Another project in the early stages of development would have SAO members working with adoptees of Asian descent to negotiate their Asian identities. Chyan cautions, however, that before any members of SAO pursue the plan further, they will get some type of training at the Intercultural Center.

John Dinh ’12, a member of SAO and a proponent of the outreach attempts, said that he believes reaching out to local high school students is especially important. “In Asian culture, it can sometimes be difficult for people to speak with their parents about certain things… All my parents ever said to me about college was, ‘Make sure you go to college all right?’ I’m hopeful that after speaking with us, these students will have a better understanding of how the process works.”

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