Friday, October 16, 2009
Language Revitalization Night
I am the chair of the Issues Committee in the Asian American Association,
one of the student organizations on the UC Berkeley campus dedicated to
uniting the Asian American community at Berkeley.
This semester, the Issues Committee is planning a Language Revitalization
Program to aid students, whose heritage language is an East Asian
language, gain better fluency in the language they speak at home. We are
trying to increase their comfort and fluency in their native languages
through conversation groups to create an encouraging atmosphere conducive
to attaining these goals. These conversation groups will have bimonthly
meetings where students can practice speaking their language with other
students. We are also inviting more fluent speakers and international
students to assist those who are less fluent in the languages.
I wish to invite the students in the Y and X series to come to our
Language Revitalization Info Night to give a brief talk about heritage
language loss in second or later generation Asian Americans and how it is
important to maintain a grasp in one's heritage language rather than
losing it to a more "popular" language spoken in school or work. During
the Info Night, we will be giving an overview of how the program is
structured and how everyone can participate in the program. We'd really
appreciate it if you could tell your students about this new program.
The Language Revitalization Info Night will be on Friday, October 16th at
7pm in 219 Dwinelle Hall.
Thank you for your time in helping us spread word about language loss in
Asian American students at UC Berkeley.
Jessica Chin (Chen Pei Yi)
Issues Committee Chair, Asian American Association
Art History & Asian American Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Monday, October 12, 2009
In Memory of Gina Hotta
APEX Express
by Renee
A public celebration of the life of Gina Hotta will be held on October 25 from 5-7pm, with a reception following.
We will gather at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th street 2nd floor, in the Pacific Renaissance Plaza.
If you are interested in sharing your memories or music, please contact us by Friday, October 16.
You can contribute photos or other small items to the Community Altar, or bring an appetizer for the reception.
Please bring cranes to add to our 1,000 cranes installation in honor of Gina's legacy.
Contact: Apex@kpfa.org
www.apexexpress.org
510-848-6767 x 464
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Interview on KPFA w/ Gina Hotta
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/54479
A day before 9-11 we let comedy through the gates with Kabeezy Singh and Sammy Obeid. Navigating race, fear and being funny with Ko Comedy. And, Sept.24 UC Walk-out/ Teach-In over cutbacks, increasing fees and UC executive pay. A talk with students' support of teachers, staff and fighting to save Asian language classes. Plus, Odissi is Indian temple dance that comes alive with Jyoti Kala Mandir and a full orchestra, hear more about their performance.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
APIEL NOW! Survey/Questionnaire
1. Please describe your experiences when enrolling in Fall 2009
language and/or culture classes. What were some of the challenges,
obstacles, or positive experiences you encountered?
2. Please describe your experiences when signing up for and taking
language and/or culture classes throughout your academic career at
Berkeley thus far. As you answer, please feel free to comment on
things like class size, being on and getting off of the waiting list,
switching sections, class availability (the number of available
sections, the types of classes offered, section times, etc.), and also
consider any similarities or differences between the different
semesters and classes.
3. Is there anything else you wish to tell us about your enrollment
experience in language and/or culture classes?
4. Do you give permission for APIEL NOW! to quote from your responses in materials used to promote increased access to API language education and expanded programs of study in API languages?
Friday, September 4, 2009
An EALC Major's Perspective on Overcrowded Classes
So the first official week of school is almost over! How has it been for all of you? Busy? Running around all over the place? Or just chilling? For me it’s been pretty busy. I’m a Chinese and Japanese double major, and I know if I hadn’t been a declared major for both of them, I would be a lot more stressed out about getting into my classes (and not being waitlisted.) Yep, that dread word—WAITLISTED. All my classes are full or overenrolled (and they all happen to be, surprise, in the EALC department). Day by day, people have been dropping like flies either to—horror of horrors, especially for a five-day-a-week-language class—eight o’clock section or simply, dropped.
It’s easy to place the blame on the most obvious target: the budget cuts. Overcrowded buses that come less frequently, libraries closed on Saturdays, sections cut, classes canceled, the rising cost of a UCB education… Yet I think that this overenrolled, overcrowded situation in many of the classes in the EALC department is not a budget crisis thing. It’s something that I’ve been seeing with the EALC department for a while now. It’s been consistently non-majors and graduate students being dropped to early morning sections, and classes growing larger and larger.
Take my Chinese 110 class for example. It’s a literary Chinese class that’s a requirement for majors and basically everyone in the class is a major or minor. You’d expect it to be full, or almost full right? Wrong. Completely overcrowded to the point where you gotta open all the windows and let the air in. Around sixty people were in class on the first day for a thirty people class. The professor teaching—Professor Ashmore—told me how he was shocked at how the class has grown since he’s last taught it a few years ago. It used to be from fifteen to twenty five people. Now the official roster is almost fifty people. In a few years. This is how fast the program has grown. Same with Japanese. My professor for Japanese 120—literary Japanese—told us how the class used to filled up two small rows of students. Now it’s over seven rows of students in a completely over enrolled class, just like the literary Chinese class. Isn’t it crazy?
You’d expect demand to be answered with supply, but instead, it’s just been answered with stuffy classroom overcrowding. It’s been this university consistently placing languages in the service education category, impervious to blatant signs of over enrollment. With the budget cuts slashing left and right, it won’t be long before overcrowding becomes downsizing what should have been expansion.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
More Links
(Analysis by UC-AFT Pres. Bob Samuels),
http://berkeleycuts.org/?p=21 (Letter to Students from TDPS Prof.
Catherine Cole)
News and views aggregators on the UC budget crisis:
http://utotherescue.blogspot.
http://toodumbtolivearchive.
http://www.k-
http://sites.google.com/site/
An economic analysis of the UC buget by Physics Professor Emeritus
Charlie Schwartz, aka "The Man Who Devoted His Retirement To Parsing
What Little Of The UC Budget The Regents Made Public"
http://universityprobe.org/
Also see his series, "Financing The University" at
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~
Marc Bousquet's blog about the casualization of higher ed.
http://howtheuniversityworks.
Grad students turn to sex work to pay the bills! Freeway flyers! Ph.D.
Casino! The collpasing tenure system!)
Also two must-reads from Bousquet:, The Waste Product of Graduate
Education: Toward a Dictatorship of the Flexible
(http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/
)
The Rhetoric of "Job Market" and the Reality of the Academic Labor
System
(http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/
George Lakoff on Privatization and the UC Budget Crisis:
http://www.
SAVE (Save The University)--Faculty Group:
http://best.berkeley.edu/~
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
UC Faculty Walkout 9/24/2009
http://ucfacultywalkout.wordpress.com/
Welcome Back - Fall Meetings
Sunday, August 30, 2009
More Links about the Budget Crisis
http://www.uclafaculty.org/FASite/UC_Budget_Crisis.html
*UC Berkeley English Department Blog w/ Responses to the Budget Crisis
http://ucberkeleyenglish.blogspot.com/2009/07/budget-crisis-and-future-of-california.html
- UC Berkeley Budget Crisis
http://www.k-grayengineeringeducation.com/budget/?page_id=51
- Charlie Schwartz's blog:
http://universityprobe.org/
- Charlie Schwartz's series, "Financing the University"
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/
- Chris Newfield's blog (probably the most comprehensive updates about the crisis system-wide):
http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/
Links to Information on the UC Budget Crisis
http://www.politicsoftrust.net/founders_view.php
- Helpful interview with AFT President Bob Samuels on Dan Tsang's radio show (KUCI) about UC budget cuts
http://www.kuci.org/podcastfiles/600/Sv090622.mp3
- Professor Charles Schwartz's website, which contains a very comprehensive numerical analysis of the budget, among other critiques of the university administration's lack of transparency:
http://universityprobe.org/
http://universityprobe.org/2009/06/salary-cuts-at-uc/#more-389
- Excellent but upsetting article (2007) about the death of the UC Pension Plan, which is very relevant right now since faculty and staff will be required to contribute to the pension plan starting next year for the first time in many years.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/parsky_s_party/Content?oid=426427
- UCSB Professor Chris Newfield's blog ("Remaking the University"), which has a comprehensive compilation of helpful links, op-eds, petitions, etc.:
http://utotherescue.blogspot.com/
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Korean language and Korean studies fundraiser coverage
- Korea Daily, April 12 2009, "Koreans calling for help for "Korean Studies at Berkeley"
- Korea Times, April 13 2009, "Save Korean Studies Classes of long history"
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Grades Are In -- 2008: Is California Measuring Up?
http://www.csus.edu/ihe/PDFs/R_Grades_Are_In_08_web.pdf
Monday, March 9, 2009
More media coverage
- World Journal, "Ling-Chi Wang Urges Against Cutting Asian Studies Courses", accessed March 2, 2009
- World Journal, Fiona Ma,Ling-Chi Wang Urge Preservation of Asian Language Courses at UC Berkeley, accessed March 2, 2009
- news.sina.com, Open Community Forum Puts Pressure on UC Berkeley - Three Demands for an Emphasis on Asian Language Curriculum, accessed March 2, 2009
- news.sina.com, (UC Berkeley Holds Open Discussion on the Importance of API Language Curriculum, accessed March 2, 2009
- Joongang Ilbo (Korean Daily), "United to Empower Multi-ethnic Language Education"
- Hankuk Ilbo (Korea Times), "Asian Pacific Islander Language Empowerment Symposium: Learning foreign language opens new opportunities"
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Hardboiled article
Monday, March 2, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Facebook pages up - Tell a friend!
Suggestions for other ways to get the word out? Post a comment here or send mail to apielnow AT gmail.com. Thanks!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
LANGUAGE MATTERS Event February 19
LANGUAGE MATTERS: STRENGTHENING ASIAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER LANGUAGE EDUCATION AT BERKELEY
An open forum to promote dialogue among UC Berkeley students, API community organizations, and UC Berkeley faculty and administration invested in building a robust API language curriculum at Berkeley.
KEYNOTE Talk on API Linguistic Diversity
By Scholar-Activist LING-CHI WANG, Professor Emeritus of Asian American Studies (UC Berkeley)
"As long as Asian languages are not taken seriously as living languages used by billions at home and abroad and treated as languages with long and rich literary traditions, which are linked and integral to majors and graduate curricula, then Asian language education will remain second-class and perennially vulnerable to budgetary volatility and cuts." -- Ling-Chi Wang
Also featuring presentations by:
FIONA MA, California Assemblywoman
GIBOR BASRI, Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion (UC Berkeley)
ELAINE KIM, Professor of Asian American Studies (UC Berkeley)
and others....
Feb 19, 2009, 4:00-7:00 PM
Heller Lounge, MLK Jr. Student Union
Free and Open to the Public
Light Refreshments
For more information, please contact apielnow AT gmail.com
Co-sponsored by the Vice Chancellor's Office of Equity and Inclusion, Asian American Studies Program, Center for Race and Gender, Institute of East Asian Studies, Center for Japanese Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Center for Southeast Asia Studies, Center for South Asia Studies, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, Asian Pacific American Student Development Office, Asian Pacific American Coalition, Townsend Center Working Group on Asian Cultural Studies, Filipinos for Affirmative Action, Korean Community Center of the East Bay, Chinese for Affirmative Action
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Welcome to our new blog
Posts from the Save East Asian Languages and Korean Studies at Berkeley blog have been imported below; the old blog will continue to exist at its current URL.
Please direct any inquiries to "apielnow AT blogspot.com". A big thank-you to all supporters, new and old!