The passing of the Upper School club fairs hasn’t stopped a new organization from breaking onto the extracurricular scene. While St. Christopher’s represents a number of different races and ethnicities on campus, the creation of the Asian Student Union Club (ASU) aims to better represent the Asian community in particular.

 In an effort to spread more cultural awareness within the STC campus, Joey Wang ’28 spearheaded the creation of the ASU, which is advised by Dr. David Shin and Mrs. Jian Yang.  The organization’s primary purpose is to spread awareness of the specifics of Asian cultures, which in the words of Wang, “can be [better understanding] anything [from] Korean foods to Chinese or Japanese food” or other aspects of culture like clothing and music. Aside from general open discussions, club meetings could potentially entail trips to local Asian restaurants and supermarkets in an attempt to give members first-hand experience with the cuisine specifically. Some of these possible locations are Indian restaurants such as “Lemon,” Cantonese restaurants like “Full Kee” and Chinese supermarkets like “Tan-A.” 

Wang also expressed his desire to interact with other Asian student unions from different schools and look into exchange programs with other students.  Another of the organization’s missions is to cover beyond well-known Eastern Asian cultures, expanding to other areas like India or Bangladesh that are often overlooked.

At this point, the ASU welcomes any member of the student body to join, planning to recruit students from both St. Christopher’s and St. Catherine’s School.  They also aim to enrich the club environment by highlighting the similarities and differences between the cultures that their members are part of. The first meeting for the ASU was on October 24th during lunch, but at this moment the details for the second are still to be determined. So far, their recruitment process has been relatively light, as the club will not fully establish its programs until next year. This said, the group already has 20 confirmed members and is expected to add another 20 to 30 this school year alone..  

However, the size of the roster is not the important thing for Wang. He is striving to use a “quality over quantity” approach to enlist genuinely curious members who have a desire to engage. The same applies to the meetings, as Wang seeks to cover a meaningful new message each time.