Graduates celebrate culture
By Allison Fung
June 8, 2008 9:02 p.m.
Irene Lee was not planning on attending the Asian and Pacific Islander Graduation celebration when she graduates this June. In fact, she had never even heard about it.
But the fourth-year Asian American studies student said she would participate if it meant it would give her family and friends the opportunity to see her walk.
“In all honesty, it’s because I don’t have enough (graduation) tickets to accommodate my family,” Lee said, referring to the limited number of seats given to each student for the regular commencement ceremonies.
“I heard APIG is all-encompassing, and students can bring (as) many people (as) they want.”
Alternative commencements began as celebrations for graduates of various minorities but are now viewed as graduations with a more personal and cultural touch. Students are able to invite a larger number of family members and graduate alongside friends whose departmental commencements may conflict with their own.
“It’s more family-oriented,” Jenice Pua, co-coordinator for the Samahang Pilipino Student Celebration, said. “In the College of Letters and Sciences and my departmental graduations, I’m just one of many.”
Pua said the Samahang Pilipino Student Celebration, unlike the college and departmental graduations, had time to give each graduate adequate attention.
The chair from the Pilipino Alumni Association will speak during the celebration, Pua said.
After the speech, the awards ceremony will continue, and a short biography of each student will be read, Pua said.
In addition, most students in the Pilipino student graduation celebration have ordered graduation stoles with a design of the Filipino flag, and traditional Filipino music will be played, according to Pua.
“At the Pilipino Student Celebration, we really try to highlight each candidate and what they did at UCLA. We want to give them their moment to shine,” Pua added.
Berky Nelson, director of the center for student programming, said the university supports the celebrations because they enable students to celebrate the ethnic diversity at UCLA.
By accommodating family members, the celebrations “give the students the opportunity to honor their parents, who obviously had to make some kind of sacrifice to allow their child to graduate,” Nelson said.
“It puts a personal spin on a large university that gives the graduating student a sense of camaraderie,” he said.
The opportunity for students to thank their family for their college education was important especially in the Asian and Pacific Islander Graduation celebration, said Cynthia Vuong, co-coordinator of the event.
The cultural aspect of the celebration will be emphasized, with the Vietnamese Language and Culture club performing a lion dance to usher in the graduates, Vuong said.
But another purpose of the celebration was to emphasize the need to give back to the Asian-American community, she said.
“Not only did we want to remind our graduates that it is a struggle to get (higher education) … but we wanted to remind our graduates that we need to mobilize and be active in the community,” she said.
Despite the cultural touch given to the celebrations, Pua said it was important to note that the Samahang Pilipino Student Celebration is open to anyone, including those not of Filipino descent.
“We don’t want anyone to feel like they need to belong to a certain group to attend the celebration,” she said.
