Not White Enough for This Party

Bernie Nguyen is Vietnamese American and graduated from UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 2021. He was a GIS (Geographic Information Science) major during his time here. Originally from San Jose, Bernie has been living at home since graduating and was formerly UCSB SEA-U (Southeast Asian Union)’s President.

 

What was your role in SEA-U?
 

I was the president. I spent my first year as a staff intern, then my second year, I was running the club as president. That involved growing club numbers, running meetings, setting our goals for the year, as well as the most important thing, which was organizing and running the conference – our youth conference.

 

What inspired you to get involved with SEA-U?

 

The youth conference. I think I’ve always enjoyed working with students. Even when I was still in high school, I was doing this mentorship program for kids. When I got to UCSB, I knew I wanted to continue volunteering with high school students. That age group is so interesting because they’re trying to figure out what to do with their life, and we’re also trying to figure it out, and it’s just seeing someone going through the same struggles that you just went through. So I got into SEA-U because the youth conferences were really interesting to me. The idea that, for free, they would bus out a bunch of kids from around the state to UCSB to stay in the dorms for a weekend and talk about everything from higher education to cultural issues was just really cool to me.

 

I’m really passionate about helping these [Southeast Asian] communities. It’s just the concept of social mobility for certain populations, especially when you’re coming from a war-torn country and don’t have generations of money to fall back on.

 

What do you think is the importance of SEA-U at UCSB?

 

I’ll start with the generic answer, which is that it provides a space for people to feel like a community, feel a sense of home. But I’d like to expand on that. The reason why is because if you don’t have a space like that specifically designed and built, no one is going to set it up for you. So keeping spaces like that, communities like that, alive and thriving is really important. Even providing just a little bit of structure goes a long way, for example, at the youth conferences. People share everything from family trauma to simple things like struggling in school. And it’s not because they came there to talk about those things. When you provide a little bit of support, it just helps people open up.

 

How did being Asian American, or Vietnamese American, impact your experience at UCSB?

 

It affected my experience in a good way because I chose for it to, by doing things like SEA-U. I could have not done all those things and been just fine in college, but it opened a lot of learning opportunities and let me meet really interesting people.

 

In the more broad sense, as in how do Asian Americans fit in at UCSB, it is the least diverse UC, I believe. And sometimes in certain spaces, especially freshman year for me, when you’re trying to find out where you belong and whatnot, it would definitely feel like a little bit of an outsider, like ‘do I belong here with all these tall white dudes.’ I don’t know. I don’t know if they treated me differently because of it. I didn’t find that so much of an issue in class, because that’s a pretty diverse environment. But it’s like the classic story of freshmen trying to find a party. I remember being like ‘we’re not white enough for this party.’

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What did you think about the diversity at UCSB when you were here?

 

There’s a lot of people in the non-POC (person of color) community that really do care and are mindful about the way they treat people or are curious about your culture. There’s also a lot of people that don’t. Sometimes you just see a community and it’s very lacking in diversity, especially Greek life. It’s like, why is there always one Asian token dude? Maybe one brown-skinned person? 

 

So, do I care to make these spaces more diverse? Personally, not really. I would rather find places where people’s values are more aligned. At UCSB, I hope one day diversity initiatives and pushes aren’t necessary, not because they don’t matter, but because we did it. We’re there. So diversity is not something we have to worry or think about. Pushing for it is important, and slowly shifting the culture one person at a time is important too. Not a fast process, but an important one for sure. And things like SEA-U, KP (Kapatirang Pilipino), VSA (Vietnamese Student Association) help facilitate that at the student level.

 

Do you think UCSB did a good job of catering to its Asian American student population?

 

The university itself didn’t really care that much. What I mean by that is if we wanted to have those spaces and put in work to support our communities, it was on us. My gripe with the university was always them making it hard for us to do that kind of thing administratively. Like they're not going out of their way to help us, but on the other hand, Greek life is such a well-established thing and the university is in regular contact with them. Things were just completely on our own. And if anything, the university seemed like a barrier at times. They gave us funding, but, again, they won’t hold your hand through anything. The resources are there, but we really did have to fight for this.

 

What would you want to see at UCSB in the future in terms of diversity and Asian American representation?

 

I think I would want them to be really intentional about how they go about [representation]. You know, sometimes some university person will be talking in a video for recruiting and say ‘oh, we really put a lot of effort into diversity.’ And it just sounds super canned. Anyone could say that, but seeing the effort and impact is a lot different, right? We see a lot of populations really struggling in higher education, like Native American students, and within Asian Americans, Lao and Hmong students, for example, so being really specific and intentional about supporting those communities and reaching out to them would be a good step.

 

Students really are putting in a lot of work, like it’s their full time jobs to run these clubs. Things like PCN (Pilipino Cultural Night) or VCN (Vietnamese Cultural Night), the school would never put on. Students are putting in so much time and effort, and it’s falling a lot on their shoulders. It would be nice to have more support from the university in whatever form that might look like.

 

I would like to see the school really cherish and embrace and uplift different events, and holidays, and important people in [POC] communities.