Mission Statement & Vision

Three decades ago, ECAASU’s founders fought along side Civil Rights activist to create equal rights for people of color. They wanted to build and strengthen the Asian American student organizations so that they can meet the social, political and educational needs of Asian and Asian American students.

This year we are going to take a look at ECAASU’s mission statement and understand the changes that we as Asian Americans have gone through, the challenges that we still need to overcome and how we can overcome them together.

Our vision for ECAASU 2008 at Cornell is to revive the passion that was in the hearts of ECAASU’s founders. Through workshops, speakers, and discussions, we will examine the progress of Asian American activism over the past three decades and what is to come in the next three decades.

Our conference will focus on the following aspects of awareness and action:

• Reflections: Overview of the last 30 years of ECAASU, the vision of ECAASU’s founders and reasons to continue the efforts of ECAASU.
• Progress: What are the issues going on now? How does this compare to issues that challenged ECAASU 30 years ago?
• Opportunities: What can students do to improve the lives of Asian Americans

What is ECAASU?

For 30 years, the East Coast Asian Student Union (ECASU) has been one of the largest unifying forces for Asian Pacific American students on campuses across the United States. One of the largest completely student-run Asian organizations in the United States, ECASU was established to establish the following four principles of unity:

• To strengthen Asian American student organizations through intercollegiate communication in order to serve the social and educational needs of Asian American students;
• To advance the social equality of minorities by eliminating prejudice and discrimination, defending human and civil rights, and combating racism and hate crimes via non-legislative means and activities permitted under Section 501(c)(3) of the Code;
• To promote community-building and mutual understanding among Asian Americans with different nationalities and all people of color; and
• To encourage Asian Americans to participate in the electoral process through non-partisan and, unbiased voter registration, get-out-the-vote, and voter education drives that are not restricted to one election period and are carried out in more than five states.
  
  [Source: ECAASU Constitution]
  

Please see the ECAASU National site for more information.

ECAASU History at Cornell

Cornell has hosted the conference twice before:

• ECASU 1988: Momentum for Change: 10 Years of ECASU
• ECASU 1998: Leading the Way to the 21st Century