Mohamed Shaker, Student Leadership Liaison at the Asian & Pacific Cultural Center, reflects on the recent grand opening of their new home and shares about the upcoming Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month events:
As I end my second year of involvement with the Asian & Pacific Cultural Center, and as the center wraps up its twenty-fifth year on campus, I’d like to use this as a moment of reflection. We had our Grand Opening celebration on April 29th and being involved in planning and participating in the festivities was a wonderful experience for me. I do not think that I will ever forgot our Grand Opening and neither will my coworkers; each of us remarked not only about how wonderful the celebration was but also what a blessing it was to be able to be the first employees working at the new building that others have worked so hard for. That was something that I carried with me going into the celebration: that though I was able to help and be a part of the Grand Opening, countless other people, many of whom I will never meet let alone know personally, worked so hard for so long so that my coworkers and I and all the students currently at OSU today would be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Tons of students, staff, faculty and community members put their heart and soul in to working on this building from its very beginning, when the prospect of a brand-new home for the APCC located in the heart of campus was at the very least a far-off dream, a fantasy that they collectively had. Yet they worked and they persevered- year after year, some leaving, new members joining- so that today, we can say that we have an Asian & Pacific Cultural Center housed in a new building and such a beautiful one as well. I catch myself walking around the building all the time, just taking in the reality and the blessing of it, that I’m here and I get to work here and so many people worked so hard for me to get this opportunity. This center is not just for me, then, and it’s not just for my staff or even just for current students at OSU today. It’s the embodied memory of all those people whose names I may know- it’s their hard work, their dedication, their hope. That’s what this and all the other Cultural Resource Centers on campus mean.
APCC Staff
With that said, we are currently in the middle of Asian & Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Throughout the year, the APCC puts on a variety of events from more social ones like our Dead Week Feast to more cultural ones such as our Henna Night or Taro Around the World events. For this year’s heritage month, we have a film series currently ongoing, an event about the history of Asians and Pacific Islanders at OSU, a session with Dr. Marcey Bamba about how colonialism impacts Pacific Islander identity and more! API Heritage Month is the product of a whole year of work- what we do in the rest of the year is condensed into a single month, jam packed with events for the whole OSU community. This year’s is obviously a special one, as we are in our new home. This year’s heritage month is thus both the annual series of events that we do as well a celebration of how we have come as a community. We would love to see you at our new building!
– Mohamed Shaker, Student Leadership Liaison
