UMD’s Asian American Student Union Task Force Petitions for Asian American Major

On March 2, 2022, Asian American Student Union Social Justice Task Force members and AAST minor students, Jackie Liu, Dahye Kang, and M Pease, were featured in The Diamondback article titled, “UMD’s Asian American Student Union task force petitions for Asian American major.”

Fifteen years after the University of Maryland’s University Senate approved an Asian American Studies minor, the university’s APIDA Social Justice Task Force of the Asian American Student Union released a petition to push for an Asian American Studies major.

The petition — launched earlier this month — has at least 125 signatures so far, according to senior biology and women’s studies major Jackie Liu. It was created to prove that there’s strong support among the student body for a new major, said senior biology and criminology and criminal justice major Dahye Kang.

Liu and Kang are co-vice presidents of advocacy for the AASU, which has a social justice task force. It’s the first step in the exhaustive process of major creation, Kang said.

“We have sister institutions who are just adopting the minor and if we want to still be thought of as a forward institution, we need to expand even further and show that we are on the forefront of supporting people of color,” Liu said. “Primarily, in this case, the Asian American community.”

AAST Director, Dr. Julie Park, was also quoted in the article.

“Students have always been the best advocates for their education,” said Dr. Julie Park, director of the university’s Asian American Studies program, in an email. “[They] have a very compelling case for the major.”

The Asian American Studies program was established in 2000, but the push for the program at this university dates back to the 1990s, according to the program website. The program currently has nearly 100 people with the minor with only three core faculty members, Dr. Park said in an email.

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