Bigger is better? That seems to be the sentiment among the attendees of the January 2007 summit. Being able to do bigger projects isn’t the point; the point is really do more impacting and meaningful projects, ones that can only be done with the full cooperation of multiple VSAs. The other is creating a space to foster innovation and diversification of VSA activities; culture shows can’t possibly be the only thing VSAs do.
Organizational memory loss tends to happen, but when it happens within one term, i.e. one year’s officers leaves nothing to the following year’s officers, that becomes a large problem, leaving VSAs to struggle for years to come. This has happened even in the strongest VSAs in the region.
We know that VSA leaders need to meet, not just to have fun, but to get things done. Such serious discussions cannot take place at a picnic, dance, show, etc. What is needed is a meeting room or spot that is quiet and where such a gathering is dedicated to that discussion. Thus that was the point of the summit. For the next summit, which will involve newly elected officers, it should be done in the summer in order to coordinate plans. That way officers from different campuses of similar positions can talk with each other to exchange best practices and ideas. Even if one school loses all institutional memory, another campus can offer their expertise, e.g. running a culture show professionally.
Another area of concern is the high school VSAs. They ought to be considered the future leaders of collegiate VSAs, and we recognize that developing good VSA leaders should start as early as possible. Of course we must also recognize that high school students have different expectations, but if college VSAs can gather and exchange best practices, perhaps there can be a dialogue between college VSAs and high school VSAs, especially to share best practices and experiences.
All VSAs face the problem of outreaching to each other, and keeping each other informed on each other’s developments. The solution, it seems, is to create a more formal structure for VSAs to communicate with each other, otherwise known as the Intercollegiate Council (ICC). Each VSA would amend their constitution to include another position called the ICC Representative whose sole purpose is to work with UVSA and other VSAs. That way even in the event that UVSA (i.e. the legally recognized nonprofit organization) should cease to exist, the VSAs would still have a framework to collaborate with each other. It is understood that the Presidents and even Vice Presidents of the VSAs would be too busy to attend a regular meeting. Therefore ICC Representatives are sent in their stead and it would be their responsibility to keep their VSA Presidents informed of important developments at other schools.
In terms of activities that the ICC themselves can organize, there seems to be a lot of replicated work on socials events where one VSA often invites other VSAs. One idea that seems to retain interest is some sort of Multi-VSA Picnic with barbeques and field games. So long as the event is jointly organized among all schools, that would encourage attendance and participation among all schools. In the short term, events requiring minimal planning would work the best, such as the rearrangement of the Tet Parade formations of each school to march in succession rather than independently.
Another area of intercollegiate collaboration is working with the national-level Union of North American VSAs (uNAVSA) on their Collective Philanthropy Project (CPP). The idea is that the Northern California region would host their own event to help raise money for the beneficiary of the CPP. While VSAs can individually fundraise money for their own nonprofit of their liking, the difference between one VSA donating $500 to a cause versus a $50,000 combined effort of VSAs across the nation is a matter of increasing the volume of our voice in the media.
Everyone wants to do their own projects and asks everyone for help, only to be denied because those people are working on their project and also asking everyone else for help. If no one budges, then no one gets all the help they need to get their project done right. This illustrates the necessity of doing one project at a time. It is a difficult thing to do, but with a Roadmap, preplanning, and foresight, we can accommodate all goals one project at a time. But we need to pledge commitment to help fulfill all of these goals. One such activity is UC Davis’ Bike-A-Thon. How can we expand this so it isn’t just UC Davis and UC Berkeley VSAs part of the effort?
The other problem may simply be too many goals to fulfill. The question isn’t which goals should be ignored and which ones to prioritize. The question is how can we combine several goals (or align goals closer together)? Is there one event that can do the same thing as three separate events? This area needs further research and innovation, but is an important philosophy to consider.
Culture shows isn’t the only project that VSAs work on. They also do charitable fundraisers, participate in the Tet festival, various social activities, and volunteer for certain projects. For example a Stanford VSA member may want to solicit members of other VSAs to participate in a Hepatitis B awareness campaign because of the high risk for Vietnamese to contract and/or spread the disease. Or a CSUEB VSA member has an idea to initiate a VSA television network, creating a feed of video content pooled from all schools. All of these activities go beyond the usual activities of most VSAs, but probably would receive insufficient attention for it to be successful. That is where the Commission System comes in.
The Commission System is a network of VSA members broken down by field of interest, whether it’s in health, the media, entertainment or humanitarian relief. By creating a visible platform, such members can more easily find others with similar interests. The only problem, of course, is that each field of interest needs dedicated coordinators to make something happen.
Should we have events targeting Vietnamese, or the mainstream community? That is the conundrum; events that target the Vietnamese community is pulling money from a limited funding source. The mainstream community is a larger funding source, but we have yet an activity that would attract them.
There is also a perception of “white-washed” Vietnamese Americans and “fobby” Vietnamese Americans. These stereotypes divide the community, driving away some students from wanting to participate in their Vietnamese communities, and reducing the talent pool of the existing VSAs. This mindset benefits no one; there is a need to educate the students and alleviate the perception.