The NorCal United Vietnamese Student Association (UVSA) will hold a summit at UC Davis this weekend, with hopes of connecting Vietnamese students, preserving traditions and celebrating culture.
Tam Phan, president of NorCal UVSA, said the summit was motivated by two questions.
“What’s our generation going to do? What’s our legacy going to be?” Phan asks. “I see huge potential for leadership, and that’s why I’m here.”
Last year’s summit at UC Berkeley was the first time Vietnamese Student Associations gathered together from Northern California campuses such as UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, San Jose State and UC Davis. That marked the birth of the organization known as UVSA.
“Our goal is to break the ice between all of the VSAs and expose them to what’s out there,” said Bao Ngo, who helped organize the first summit.
The 26-year-old Phan, who used to ferry water and supplies for the group before presiding over it, came to understand his culture and appreciate the struggles of his family through his involvement in the group.
“They came to America with nothing – we were dirt poor,” Phan said. “They worked up to middle class, though, and that’s helped me realize that I can’t just sit on my butt and do nothing.”
Through the summit, Phan and Ngo, both former students at San Jose State University, hope to improve lines of communication between generations in the Vietnamese community.
At times, they were unable to mobilize on key issues like the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency’s policy to deport Vietnamese with criminal records because of resistance from the elder generation.
“The hardest thing is when elder members of the Vietnamese community don’t take us seriously,” said Ngo, adding there has been a lack of dialogue about the generation gap within the community.
“We’re already underrepresented as Asian youths – we’re a minority within a minority,” said Phan. “However, we’d like to be the ones to provide the youth of our community a voice.”
Phan says that a year ago he would not have cared about some of these issues, but now he realizes they do affect him and others like him.
Furthermore, Phan and Ngo have applied what they learned from UVSA by starting up a T-shirt business called Het-Xay (pronounced “Het Sigh”), which translates as “awesome” in English. Vietnamese language and humor will be incorporated in their products.
“We thought it would be nice to give something back to our community and inspire some people, to show them that you don’t always have to do the typical thing,” said Phan. “You have to know a little Vietnamese to get it, though.”
