Below Chinese newspaper article & photo by “Chinese News Weekly” Staff Reporter, Huling Chan.
OPPOSE: Allowing the considerations of race, sex, & skin color for admission, recruitment & retention at Public Colleges & Universities! OCA-New Jersey Chapter hosts Panel Discussion.
[By Chinese News Weekly reporter, Huling Chan]
On March 30, 2014, 2pm, OCA-New Jersey Chapter hosted a panel discussion at the Millburn Public Library. More than 100 people sat at this panel discussion with the majority in attendance being Chinese Americans.
Yuan-Fen Lai was the moderator for this panel discussion. The topic of the day’s panel discussion was the Potential Impact of California’s SCA-5 legislation & the Challenges faced by the Asian Pacific American Students. California state senator Edward Hernandez introduced the SCA-5 Bill which basically if passed, will allow public colleges & universities to use race, sex, skin color & national origin in their considerations for student recruitments, admissions & student retention. If the SCA-5 bill passes, the majority of the Asian Pacific American students will very likely be met with discrimination during admissions because of their race & the color of their skin. This bill caused quite a big stir in California & drew strong opposition & criticism from many Chinese Americans. Although the SCA-5 bill is currently temporarily withdrawn; it is however, not indicative that it will not be re-introduced again in the future.
The host & presenter in this Panel Discussion ~ OCA-New Jersey Chapter president Virginia Ng, believes that as Chinese Americans, we need to unite together to protect our rights! New York and New Jersey both have large Asian American population. Going forward, is it possible that students in these states will face similar cases of racism & discriminations? We don’t know for sure but we need to help the Asian American students fight for fairness and equality! We need to raise our voices for our fellow Chinese and Asian Americans!
Rounding out the 4 panelists of this day’s panel discussion are: Jack Ouyang, PhD ~ Chinese Alliance for Equality; Chunyan Li, PhD ~ Professor at Pace University; Austin Jia ~ Student at Millburn High School. They each went up on the podium separately to present their voices. They cited the recent segment of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live Television as one example of racism & called out to everyone to take action.
