CUNY DIGITAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

This is the first issue of LOTUS, a student-run publication devoted to Asian/Asian American perspectives at Hunter College, which came out in the Spring of 1988. The issue includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, photography, and reflections on the 1988 East Coast Asian American Student Union (ECAASU) conference at Cornell University by Hunter students. Topics span mixed-race politics, Asian American experiences of counseling and psychology, beauty standards, the redress/reparations movement for Japanese war crimes, pan-Asian social movements, and the murder of Vincent Chin. The journal is an example of the ways that Asian American students self-organized intellectual, artistic, and political community before an institutionalized program took hold.

The Hunter College Asian American Studies Program (AASP) was established in 1993. As the only academic program in Asian American studies in the CUNY system, the AASP offers a minor in Asian American Studies and other resources and programming. The AASP supports scholars, artists, and activists advancing scholarship in the fields of Asian American studies and critical ethnic studies and serves as a resource for New York City's Asian American communities. In 2006, the program was at risk of being cut due to a lack of funding. Students formed the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH) and saved the program within a year. CRAASH is now a student-run club that continues to advocate for the AASP.