{"id":25742,"date":"2012-10-03T23:11:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T23:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25742"},"modified":"2012-10-03T23:13:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T23:13:05","slug":"tufts-hapa-reaches-out-to-mixed-race-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25742","title":{"rendered":"Tufts Hapa reaches out to mixed-race students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tufts Hapa reaches out to mixed-race students<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Tufts Daily: The Independent student newspaper of Tufts University<\/a>
\nMedford, Massachusetts
\n2012-10-03<\/p>\n

Alexandria Chu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Among the more than 300 student organizations at Tufts, there are many geared toward specific ethnicities and cultures. Tufts Hapa, a new group on campus, is working to become the only one intended to represent mixed race students.<\/p>\n

In 2000, the United States Census was changed to allow citizens to check multiple boxes of racial identification, and the 2010 Census showed a 28 percent increase in interracial households. Tufts Hapa hopes to reflect these changes on campus.<\/p>\n

Tufts Hapa aims to create a community of mixed race peoples of part Asian descent, according to President Joseph Wat, a senior. The club is currently in the process of receiving recognition by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) and has the support of the Asian American Center.<\/p>\n

Tufts Hapa executive board member and senior Stephanie Howell explained that the start of her involvement in Tufts Hapa stemmed from the instability of past multiracial organizations on campus…<\/p>\n

…Tufts Hapa\u2019s faculty support, Assistant Professor of Economics Arthur Chiang<\/a>, commented on the difficulty of achieving the balance between maintaining pride in ethnicity and solely defining oneself by it, which is particularly tricky for people of a mixed-race heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the basis of [your] social life shouldn\u2019t be based on your race … It\u2019s certainly a concern, everyone just fracturing into their own little [ethnic] groups. Of course, at the same time, no matter what background you have, you should feel some pride in your culture,\u201d Chiang said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit harder if you\u2019re mixed, so I think a good thing for this club is the celebration of Hapa culture. It\u2019s not an exclusionary thing, but more about learning about our experiences.\u201d…<\/p>\n

…Professor of History Gary Leupp<\/a> notes a feeling of alienation throughout the history of people of mixed-race descent. He gives an example of an epitaph<\/a> written in 1680 by Pieter Hartsinck, the son of a Dutch merchant and a Japanese woman.<\/p>\n

According to Leupp, the epitaph is in St. Jakob\u2019s Church in Osterode, Lower Saxony, Germany<\/a>, detailing that Hartsinck and his mother were born in the East and his father in Europe.<\/p>\n

Leupp quoted Hartsinck, \u201cMy destiny varied from the beginning … I left my homeland early in life to find my father\u2019s country. But I could not find my true home.\u201d Leupp explained that Hartsinck accomplished much in his life, even translating Descartes\u2019<\/a> work into Latin from French, but his identity struggles are evident in his epitaph…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tufts Hapa reaches out to mixed-race students The Tufts Daily: The Independent student newspaper of Tufts University Medford, Massachusetts 2012-10-03 Alexandria Chu Among the more than 300 student organizations at Tufts, there are many geared toward specific ethnicities and cultures. Tufts Hapa, a new group on campus, is working to become the only one intended […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2895,6,20],"tags":[12272,12274,5606,12276,12275,5502,12273,9693],"class_list":["post-25742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-campus-life","category-new-media","category-usa","tag-alexandria-chu","tag-arthur-chiang","tag-gary-leupp","tag-joseph-wat","tag-stephanie-howell","tag-the-tufts-daily","tag-tufts-hapa","tag-tufts-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25742\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}