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sian American students at Syracuse University each have their own unique stories and aspirations, but several share common experiences that echo those of many Asian Americans.
Asian students make up 6% of SU’s 21,322 students — including undergraduate, graduate and law school students — according to SU’s fall 2020 census. Also, 17.6% of the student body are international students.
The Daily Orange asked seven Asian American students and recent alumni of SU about their transitions to college, professional goals and views of their identities. Each talked about their families, their childhoods and their journeys to adulthood parallel to their time at the university.
Here are their stories:
Brandon Lau, 19, sophomore
East coast cities teach young professionals such as Brandon Lau that life follows a strict, straightforward plan. For him, it was always school, then an internship, then an entry-level office job.
It was always “business, business, business,” he said.
“You need to choose a profession and stick with it,” Lau said. “There’s always a set plan.”
His drive to attain this lifestyle led him to the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, where he currently studies finance. But he faced a culture shock during his freshman year that shaped a different outlook on life — one that was more complex than going to school and focusing on work.
The ethnic makeup of SU’s student body mirrored that of his high school in Staten Island, New York, but Lau still felt alone because other Asian American students weren’t visible on campus. During his freshman year, Lau lived on the second floor of Day Hall and never saw another Asian student on the floor.
“It was kind of weird that, when I got to campus, I didn’t resonate with or see any other Asian or Asian American people,” Lau said. “I couldn’t connect with anyone personally.”
Ethnic-interest groups on campus bring people together, said Lau, who joined Asian Students in America in the fall of his freshman year and Lambda Phi Epsilon, an Asian-interest fraternity, in the spring. The greatest virtue of these clubs in a predominantly white institution is that they provide people with a community that can help push the stress of college behind them, Lau said.
In November 2019, during Lau’s first semester on campus, students found racist graffiti targeting Black and Asian people in Day Hall. For days, DPS and SU administrators did not address the vandalism, the first of at least 33 hate crimes and incidents reported on and near campus beginning that month.
The acts of hate targeted multiple marginalized groups and included racist graffiti and slurs directed at Asian students.
While some of the new friends Lau had met felt upset and unsafe, he couldn’t understand why he didn’t feel the same initially.
Throughout his entire childhood, he assumed that it was normal for Asian people to be confronted with slurs, stereotypes and mocking because of their race. He always shrugged those actions off whenever it happened to him. But at that point in college, he realized that seemingly harmless remarks can pose risks to others’ security.
“Growing up, I really thought it was normal when someone would slant their eyes at me or say something racist to me,” Lau said. “It’s so normalized that we even make fun of ourselves just to get other people laughing. It was that moment in college when I realized that’s not okay.”
Yanan Wang, 21, senior
When Yanan Wang came to SU, she didn’t know how she should reinvent herself socially.
On campus, Wang was fixated on finding a like-minded community that offered her a chance to belong, so she gravitated more toward Asian-interest clubs.
“I was so comfortable being around Asian people because my high school was (predominantly) Asian — people who looked like me and acted like me,” Wang said. “I was wondering if I wanted to broaden my horizons and be uncomfortable for once, but I ended up falling back on people that made me comfortable.”
Looking back as a senior, Wang doesn’t know if it was the best idea to immerse herself with other Asian American people freshman year because some of her friends expected her to conform and avoid her independent nature. She didn’t know if she should stay with the group she made friends with or break off and focus on her own path again.
Wang stayed with the friends she met in Asian Students in America, eventually becoming president of the organization in fall 2019. And in November, she joined the sit-in at the Barnes Center at The Arch alongside #NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students, to protest SU’s response to the series of hate crimes and incidents.
Wang remembers her parents advised against her joining the sit-in, worrying about the possibility of disciplinary consequences if Wang helped organize protesters.
But Wang pushed them away. She felt that, with her position as an Asian student leader, she had to do something. So as president of Asian Students in America, Wang held a gathering with other Asian-interest clubs on campus to participate as a collective in the Barnes Center sit-in. She also used Asian Students in America as a platform to mobilize other Asian students through social media.
Asian Americans are often stereotyped as submissive, law-abiding people who are afraid of doing anything against the norm and who accept whatever aggression or oppression comes their way, Wang said. With the Barnes Center protest, he saw a chance to show other Asian students that they shouldn’t remain silent.
“A lot of people like my parents say that those things happen, and they don’t care. At that moment, I saw that what you do really shows what kind of person you are,” Wang said. “That was one of the main motivations for me to go against my parents. I didn’t want us to be perceived that way anymore and get bullied and not fight back.”
Sadia Ahmed, 21, senior
Sadia Ahmed thinks a lot about the events that took place in Day Hall in November 2019.
Ahmed, whose parents are from Bangladesh, was tired of hearing people tell her that racist language against Asian people is normal and should be ignored. As president of the Residence Hall Association in fall 2019, Ahmed knew she needed to help improve SU’s response to hate crimes and incidents so students feel safer living on campus.
“In college, I kind of broke that stereotype for myself,” Ahmed said. “I look back at myself four years ago, and I was a completely different person. That Sadia would not be standing up to administrators to say they were wrong.”
Growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, Ahmed said it wasn’t uncommon for her to hear people comment on her ethnicity and religion. Her skin tone is visibly dark. She is Muslim, and she wore a hijab.
“I thought if anyone said anything about my race or religion, I’ll ignore it. I’m not going to do anything. What does it matter?” Ahmed said. “That changed pretty quickly. It got to me mentally.”
Remarks on her appearance were more prevalent but less explicit when she came to SU. Oftentimes, people would ask her to explain the reasons behind everything she did and everything she wore, as well as every Muslim tradition.
Ahmed also met fewer people at SU that looked like her than she did in her high school, and those she met didn’t connect with her as well. Once again, she was stuck in the gray area between being Asian and American.
She knew that she had to adapt at SU, the place where she’d be living for the next four years. That’s when she joined RHA and found her place on campus.
When students reported the racist graffiti in Day Hall, Ahmed tried to provide a forum for students to voice their frustrations to SU administrators and have productive conversations to create better practices for the future.
Ahmed was surprised by how few Asian students participated in the forum. At times, other students would overshadow the Asian students who spoke up and try to speak over them, she added.
For Ahmed, it’s time for Asian students to be seen as outspoken people who stand up against oppressive voices.
“Our generation is fed up,” Ahmed said. “We’re tired of that stereotype (of staying quiet). I used to be one of those people who thought, ‘maybe I shouldn’t ruffle my feathers.’ But now I want to ruffle those feathers and tell people when they need to stop.”
Alex Zhu, 23, graduate student
Alex Zhu considers himself to be in a middle point between the Western culture he grew up in and the Chinese culture he was born in.
He was born in Taishan, Guangdong, China — about 100 miles west of Hong Kong — and moved to the United States with his family when he was 6. His parents retained a lot of their Chinese heritage after moving to the U.S. and incorporated that in Zhu’s upbringing.
While Zhu didn’t grow up in the wealthiest family, he said his parents’ upbringings were much harsher. It wasn’t until later in his college career that he understood why money was important to his parents.
During his spring 2019 semester, Zhu studied abroad in Hong Kong. While he was there, he visited Taishan, the town he was born. He felt a sense of nostalgia visiting locations he was familiar with, such as the school he attended for kindergarten. At the same time, he realized how lucky he is that his parents moved to the U.S.
Zhu saw how children in the town would go to work in a big city far away right after finishing high school and would rarely be able to visit home. He also noticed how battered buildings looked. While he thinks he would have been able to get by growing up in that environment, he’s not sure he would have been able to attend college or have the lifestyle and job he has today.
He found a deeper connection with his parents after visiting Taishan and seeing their sacrifices right in front of him.
“There’s a lot of people out there who are struggling to make a living and raise a family,” Zhu said, “just because they have hope that their sons and daughters will succeed in the future.”
To Zhu, family trust is a valuable commodity. Growing up, his parents didn’t give him and his brother allowance or spend a lot of money on premium household items. Until Zhu got his own job, money in the household was a collective in his family, and he relied on his parents’ trust that he wouldn’t spend it frivolously.
Most Asian families don’t want others to know the side of their lives that exhibit weakness, Zhu said. Money determines success and status, which determines how Asian people raise their children.
“I guess for my parents, my brother and I are their hope,” Zhu said. “After moving here, we’re all they have, and they want us to succeed.”
Bianca Louise Andrada, 21, junior
Bianca Louise Andrada never felt like she was Asian enough. She neglected a lot of her Filipino culture growing up.
In middle school, where most of her classmates were white, she would refuse to eat Filipino food and would ask her mother to dye her hair blonde to fit in. She went to a predominantly Black and Latino high school, where she still felt like an outsider.
While she had originally wanted to be a sound engineer, Andrada went into biomedical engineering out of the fear of disappointing her family.
To Andrada, this represented a complete shift in her life that helped her see the world in a different way. In Andrada’s eyes, the performing arts and music industries require a lot of blood, sweat and tears to make content that will perpetually be critiqued. But bioengineering is a very flexible field of study within engineering, she said.
Biomedical engineering looked like an achievable path to Andrada. It was a reliable career angle that gave light to different mentalities, people and resources.
“I don’t regret it, though. I found a passion I didn’t know I had,” Andrada said. “But that’s where I’ve seen how parents and family members may push children to (reach for more) attainable dreams.”
After coming to SU and later joining Kappa Phi Lambda, Andrada realized there was no such thing as not being Asian enough.
A comment some people in engineering throw at Andrada is that Asian people take all of the jobs. Though Asian people made up about 14% of people employed in architecture and engineer occupations in 2020, Andrada said people fail to distinguish different ethnicities and group Asian people under one large umbrella. There aren’t a lot of Filipino people visible in engineering leadership, for example.
Many aspects of American culture depict women and marginalized groups as unfit for being leaders, Andrada said. She knows that these stereotypes affect a lot of people in STEM disciplines, and she feels that her experiences growing up and going to SU have prepared her to face it.
Andrada wants to be a part of a growing band of Asian Americans who are creating a shift in how they are perceived.
“I’m an engineer. And I’m going to be a leader in this field,” Andrada said. “I just hope that, going forward, people will start to see that just because someone’s Asian doesn’t mean that they are good at math, that they’re submissive, that they’re going to be quiet. The honest truth is that that stereotype is dying.”
Kate Abogado, 21, graduated May 2020
Kate Abogado has always been a workaholic. In high school and college, she had every single hour of her day planned. Her calendar app had no white space, and most of what she talked about with her friends was related to schoolwork, career goals or the future.
While at SU, Abogado worked as a teaching assistant in the School of Information Studies, hosted a talk show for WJPZ-FM 89.1 “Z89” and worked several jobs and internships in research analysis. When she graduated in 2020 with a job offer from Deloitte, a professional services network, Abogado deleted her calendar app. She finally had a moment to breathe with a sense of security.
“I spent so much time to get this life for myself,” she said. “Now I have it, and all there’s left is to live the life.”
As the first-born among three children of Filipino immigrants, Abogado felt like she was expected to maintain connections and heritage within her family. At the same time, she believed she could achieve something professionally on her own. Because of her drive of self-reliance, she only tried activities in college that would boost her resume and make her a more viable job candidate.
A lot of Asian Americans are united in a struggle of trying to balance individual life paths with the traditions and wishes of their parents, Abogado said.
“There’s always just a weird gray area of being Asian American,” Abogado said. “You’re too American for your Asian family, and then you’re too Asian for some Americans.”
Now that Abogado lives on her own, she doesn’t see her ethnicity as an aspect of her life that built her personality. But she realizes that her upbringing in a Filipino household had a big impact on how she views the world.
“Now that I’m older and have more emotional maturity, it was the first time I would have really mature conversations with my parents,” Abogado said. “It took the last month before I moved out of the house to finally have a good conversation with my parents and reconcile issues that we’ve had for a long time.”
Amaar Asif, 20, junior
Amaar Asif may be the first in his family to go to college, but his grandfather came to the U.S. from Pakistan and opened the door for his family.
His grandfather didn’t have a job immediately after moving to the U.S. and lived on the streets of New York City. He later found work as a gas station attendant, eventually becoming the owner of the building while continuing to work there as a mechanic. But about 30 years ago, a hydraulic system holding a truck malfunctioned while Asif’s grandfather was working underneath it, breaking his ribs, spine and legs.
His grandfather is now paralyzed and experiences chronic pain. Asif, a junior at SU, knows that he has an opportunity that his parents and grandparents did not have. He hopes to go to medical school after graduating college and contribute to researching future treatment options for various health issues.
“I came to a point where I asked myself, ‘why is paralysis such an underscored issue in society? With medical advancements today, why do individuals with paralysis just kind of have to deal with it?’” Asif said.
When Asif arrived at SU, he had trouble connecting with new people. He felt like an outcast to the students on his floor in the health studies learning community. So, he tried to find a social group in various clubs and student organizations, such as the South Asian Student Association and the Phi Delta Epsilon International Medical Fraternity.
But when students reported graffiti targeting Black and Asian students in Day Hall, Asif felt like he couldn’t contribute to the situation in his position as a resident adviser. So he applied to join the Student Association as a way to make a difference on campus.
During his sophomore year, Asif saw these commitments affect his GPA. It was so easy for him to commit to extracurriculars at SU, but they took time away from studying for classes.
Asif still spends a lot of his time as an RA, an undergraduate researcher and the chair of academic affairs of SA. But he has found that he can say “no” to people when he really needs to focus on his coursework.
And while he knows he won’t graduate with a 4.0 GPA, he’s working to improve his grades to enroll in a master’s degree program while continuing to work in organizations to benefit the Syracuse community.
“There always has to be something better. I want to go into medicine to be better — to benefit society and, of course, relieve the pain. The pain my grandfather has gone through for the past 30 years, many individuals wouldn’t be able to continue with that every day,” Asif said. “And he’s stronger than ever.”
Video and photos taken by Richard J Chang.
