About
Mission Statement:
The objective of the Boston College Korean Students Association (KSA) is to cultivate and promote an interest in Korean and Korean American history, culture, and many other facets of the Korean and Korean American experience by providing opportunities for Boston College students to come together on a political, cultural, and social level. KSA serves as an active academic support network for Koreans and Korean Americans through events fostering community development and stimulating personal development in defining one’s identity. KSA thereby embraces the responsibility to educate Boston College as a whole as well as the surrounding community in accordance with its objectives. Through these guidelines, Boston College’s KSA will respectfully represent and share the Korean heritage.
With focus on Korean and Korean American culture, increasing diversity, and cultural awareness on campus, KSA encourages discussion and consciousness about Korean and Korean American issues. KSA strives to be a resource for its members by not only promoting various cultural, political, and social events, but also providing a space for its members to explore and express their identity. KSA also pushes to be a resource by being accessible on a personal level for its members.
History:
KSA was founded in 1991 under the advising of Professor Liem. It was a really small club back then with only 4 officials on the E-Board and was primarily a social club. Over the years, KSA has grown in terms of members as well as recognition. Previous E-Boards have led KSA from being strictly social to being more culturally and politically aware of Korean American as well as other Asian American issues. In 2004, Boston College KSA was named “Best KSA of the Year” at KASCON, which stands for The Korean American Students Conference and is an annual colloquium designed to inspire open discussion on the state and evolution of the Korean American community. In the 2007-2008 school year, KSA was named “Culture Club of the Year” by the AHANA Leadership Council at Boston College.2008-2009 Theme:
Reclaiming our past to embrace the present and to reshape our future:
The 2007-2008 academic year was no different from any other year in that it provided many challenges for the Korean Students Association. What, however, was special about this year was the manner in which our membership responded to these obstacles. The tone of the club was set in mid-October when over a hundred students, both Korean and non-Korean, attended the 3rd Annual Retreat. The executive board carefully planned and organized a retreat that invited its participants to engage in small and large group discussions that targeted unspoken topics. Additionally, student-led seminars tackled issues that included but were not limited to mental health, body image, and intergenerational conflict. The result was that individuals with personal troubles recognized their struggles as part of a larger collective issue. By raising self-awareness and engaging each other in constructive dialogue, our members developed a positive sense of empowerment through shared experiences. These feelings had an indescribably powerful effect that has allowed our members to feel more at peace individually, to form genuinely lasting interpersonal relationships, and to engage more confidently with the greater AHANA and BC Community.
The successes of the past year have uncovered a critically important need: an understanding of our history and placing our lives within a contextual framework. The experiences of the past year created a belief in our executive board that our membership is ready to explore and actively discuss major relevant episodes in history that have had profound impacts on the Korean and Korean-American community. Consequently, our hope is that the broader society is influenced on their respective level as well. Some historical topics on our agenda include but are not limited to: pre-1965 and post-1965 immigration history, the Korean Independence Movement and its influence on immigration, the Korean (Forgotten) War, re-unification and other existing problems between the Two Koreas, and the L.A. Riots of 1992. Through the introduction of such historically important topics, we hope to provide opportunities for our membership, as well as the greater Boston College community, to explore and understand cultural formations such as the notion of Asian-Americans as the model minority.
The Korean Students Association understands the cyclical nature of progress and decline in individuals, organizations, and societies. We believe that we are currently walking on the arduous path towards progress, and we are devoted to providing our members with the tools necessary to become civically active and informed citizens upon graduation. In order to do so, we must dictate, for ourselves, the direction in which we would like our population to move. As developing leaders in American society, it is of utmost importance that we understand our lives in the greater context of the United States of America. We can only do so by reclaiming and re-discovering whatAmerican History textbooks fail to mention. Through this collectively concerted exploration of our shared history, we hope to make sense of the things (habits, language, family, etc.) that make us who we are today.
In the upcoming year, we are looking forward to working closely with other AHANA and non-AHANA groups. By doing so, we hope to continue developing solidarity while also raising cultural awareness. Although our goal is to educate students on what it means to be Korean-American, we realize that it is useless if we, ourselves, do not possess a proper knowledge of other histories.