[media-credit name=’SIGNE BREWSTER/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]”Bold” was the word of the night at a diversity forum hosted Thursday by the Asian American Student Union, as participants deliberated the future of the minority group’s presence on campus.

AASU co-founder and UW senior Duc Luu said while there are already several Asian American groups on campus, his is unique in its goals.

“We said, ‘We don’t want to do anything they do.’ We want to meet a need that has not already been met. We want to do programming that is risky, that is bold, that is totally different from what anyone else is doing,” Luu said. “How can you have a great university when everyone comes from the same place? You want people from all walks of life.”

According to member and UW junior Stella Luong, the long-term goal of AASU is to unite all the Asian groups on campus by serving as a means of networking. Through collaboration, the Asian American voice would have more force on campus.

“We want to unite them with a common goal of what the Asian American community is. We’ll do it, together,” Luong said. “There are media images of what Asians are: they talk a certain way, act a certain way. We want to create an image that is based on individuals and not stereotypes.”

The majority of the meeting was spent in small groups discussing problems faced by Asian American students on campus.

Many participants stated that minorities are poorly represented, and the Asian community is especially less visual.

“The number of explicit racial incidents has not been huge for me. The problem on this campus is invisibility,” Luu said.

Many students shared personal experiences of racial discrimination, often dealing with the perception of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners.”

Graduate student Yeng Vang expressed frustration toward a generalization of all Asian people as fresh immigrants or foreign students. She said that there is a need for education and urged other students to get involved.

“We are very diverse within our own group,” Vang said. “Educating community members … so that they know more about Asian Americans would be awesome, but it might be a long time before we get there.”

Luong noted cultural education may be declining on campus as programs such as the Southeast Asian studies major are losing professors due to lack of student enrollment. She hopes that groups like AASU will help to fill in these educational gaps.

AASU has devoted the semester to strengthening their group, but plans on diving into bigger plans next semester. A mentor program between older and younger Asian students, a cookbook and memorial are currently in the works.

Luong hopes that AASU will provide a forum for the exploration and strengthening of identity.

“We need different types of people. We want to break what Asian is and what American is and mold what we are as individuals,” Luong said. “We want to be the welcoming, ambitious group that is here for everyone.”