MEMBER SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Stephanie Kong
Junior, Econ major, Northwestern University
New Jersey, joined APAC beginning of last year
Last year, Northwestern University’s Asian Pacific American Coalition (APAC) won the 2014 MAASU
Board of Advisors award. As fall term just began in late September, we sat down with the president
of Northwestern’s APAC to discuss their goals and challenges for the upcoming school year.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE APAC AS IT EXISTS ON NORTHWESTERN’S CAMPUS?
APAC is a group designed to discuss pan-Asian issues. We differ from other groups on campus in
that heritage-based or multicultural groups tend to focus on a specific culture and creating a space
for them in the community, but we focus more on finding/exploring a Asian American voice in a
socio-political context. We are focusing more on the educational aspect, which will hopefully broaden into more activism (but I don’t think we can do that until the community is more unified).
HOW WOULD YOU DEFINE YOUR APAC COMMUNITY?
I consider the core/exec members of APAC as “the APAC community”. We haven’t really had a lot of
success in keeping APAC general members engaged in any meaningful capacity. They’re mostly our
friends that come out to support and don’t really consider themselves “APAC”. I think we’re going to
try to keep holding general meetings, but keep it smaller and use them more as a way for the APAC
community to come together.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHALLENGES YOU SEE FACING APAC?
I think a lot of people don’t put APAC as a top priority, and when that happens things get really
chaotic. Things still end up getting planned but they don’t necessarily get executed as well. I want to
have less events, but have them really, really well done.