Half-Asian Students Create A Club of Their Own

Several students revived a club this year because their identities did not quite fit in with the traditional, large ethnic groups on campus.

Their new "half-Asian" club has quietly joined the campus ethnic scene.

President Rebecca M. Weisinger '02 revived the Half-Asian Persons' Association (HAPA) last fall after trying out larger Asian ethnic groups.

"There was certainly a community [of hapa people at Harvard]," Weisinger says. "We felt underrepresented."

Weisinger, now president of the organization, says the group began meeting in October and now has a mailing list of 70 students with about a dozen active members. HAPA meetings are held Wednesday nights at 8 p.m., usually at Herrell's Ice Cream or Loker Commons.

According to the group's Web site, the word "hapa" is of Hawaiian origin. Originally intended to describe individuals of mixed Hawaiian heritage, the word was adopted by the Asian community in Hawaii as a label for children who were mixed-Asian.

Members say that at HAPA meetings they celebrate the racial heritage they all share--identifying with more than one race.

"If you're a hapa...you have two sides to your culture," says Adrian M. Wall '03, the group's secretary. "Most hapas have a tendency to choose one over the other."

But the group's primary goals are creating an environment where people feel comfortable and helping each other learn about their different backgrounds.

"We have a group where we can identify with each other," he says. "If you have a group to do this with, it makes it easier and more meaningful," he adds.

"[HAPA is] celebrating a watered-down Asianness," adds Andrew W. Hartlage '01, the group's "sergeant-at-arms."

Some group members say that, as half-Asian people, they don't feel entirely comfortable in organizations such as the Harvard-Radcliffe Chinese Students Association (CSA) or the Asian American Association (AAA).

"It just wasn't the comfort level I was looking for," Weisinger says of her experience with CSA and AAA.

Hartlage adds that being a person of mixed Asian heritage "doesn't come up" in CSA and AAA.

However, Emily Yu-chi Yang '00 and Walter Kim '00, this year's AAA co-presidents, say they are fully supportive of HAPA and that AAA is supportive of students whose membership overlaps with other ethnic organizations.

Yang says it is hard for AAA to focus too much attention on specific groups within Harvard's Asian community.

"AAA is a large organization, but still, we only have so much time, man-power, and resources, and therefore I am glad that there are groups such as HAPA...which can address the specific needs of different ethnic/cultural groups here on campus," Yang writes in an e-mail message.

Yang adds that AAA, as an umbrella organization, wants to make everyone feel welcome.

"I am very disturbed to hear that some members of the HAPA community do not feel comfortable being in AAA," she writes. "However, I am very glad that this has been brought to my attention and we will definitely look into ways of improving the organization, so that more HAPA students feel comfortable being in AAA."

Kim writes that having a separate group for half-Asian students can be "extremely valuable."

"At present, there is no way to provide a concrete definition for the Asian American identity and it's something that we (meaning Asian Americans) are constantly struggling with," he writes, adding that it is important to have separate groups if different people need to find a common ground.

HAPA members say their common experience began in childhood, when they often encountered difficulties because of their mutiracial heritage.

"Mixed people have a harder time adjusting to racial categories," says William Lung-Fu "Lonnie" Everson '02, HAPA's "Master of the Big Pants."

Everson, who is part Chinese, part Japanese and part Caucasian, was born and raised in Japan, where he says people treated him like an American. At age 8 he moved to California, where he was viewed as Japanese.

In junior high, "I was...labeled by the Asian people as being white and by the white people as being Asian," Everson says.

Weisinger, who is half-Chinese and half-Caucasian says, "The issue of being mixed wasn't an issue for me until college admissions." But she still felt that she was viewed as white in elementary school and as Chinese in high school.

Still, being a member of a diverse racial background has its benefits as well.

"It's a unique experience growing up with two different backgrounds, two different cultures," Everson says. "[At home] we celebrated the fact that we could understand more than one culture."

Everson, who is also co-president of the Japan Society and public relations director for the Asian American Brotherhood, says that being half-Asian has given him "a better perspective on things," strengthened him as an individual, and allowed him to easily adapt to different groups.

HAPA's major project for this year is organizing the "Fourth Pancollegiate Conference on the Mixed Race Experience: Redefining Other," to be held at Harvard, April 14-16.

The First HAPA

Kent M. Walther '99-'01 was the 1995-1996 club secretary of the first hapa group on campus, started by a graduate student named Christine Millet.

The original HAPA held discussions about biracial issues such as mixed marriages, sponsored the premiere American showing of "Doubles," a television documentary on people of half-Asian descent, and held social events featuring Asian food like sushi and Chinese noodles.

According to Walther, the first HAPA gave its members a chance to discuss biracial issues, which they had not had a chance to do.

"We all had had similar related experiences and difficulties growing up, but had never really talked with other people who had experienced the same types of things with regard to being of mixed-race descent," Walther writes in an e-mail message.

Like the present-day HAPA, the original HAPA had a small core group of active members--about 10. But unlike the new HAPA, the original group existed before the emergence of mixed-race golf celebrity Tiger Woods, and before the 2000 Census, which allows Americans to fill in more than one racial bubble.

"This was all before Tiger Woods became famous and elevated discussions of mixed-race issues to the forefront of the American consciousness," Walther writes.

Weisinger says it was easy for the group to gain official recognition from the University because the current HAPA members were simply reviving a defunct student group.

Master of the Big Pants

HAPA takes an egalitarian view of its bureaucracy.

The committee members who supplement the four-member executive board were given lighthearted titles. Hartlage is the "Sergeant-at-Arms," Adam B. D. Sadler '02 is "Captain of the Guard," and Everson is "Master of the Big Pants."

Hartlage says that he didn't feel quite important enough as a simple "rank-and-file member."

"I asked to be made Sergeant-at-Arms, and indeed I was made Sergeant-at-Arms on the spot," he says.

Everson, meanwhile, got his title because he always wears big pants.

"I just wear big pants," he says. "I just asked for it."