Asian Culture Center offers support service

The IU Asian Culture Center might appear small from the outside, but the amount of support and advocacy it offers to IU's ever-growing Asian student population is described by some as nothing short of colossal. \n"The ACC was created by students for students. Our mission is to educate the IU and Bloomington communities about every aspect of Asian culture," said Wendy Ho, a graduate assistant and student outreach coordinator at the center.\nThe Asian Culture Center, 807 E. 10th St., was founded in 1998 and provides programs and services geared toward improving the college experience of about 2,500 IU Asian students. \n"In a predominantly white campus of 36,000 students, some minorities can feel lonely or alienated and need a commitment from IU to help them feel more at home," said Asian Culture Center Director Melanie Castillo-Cullather. "The ACC is more than just a place. We represent advocacy and an outlet for the issues concerning students of Asian descent." \nThe culture center hosts the Asian Language Learning Program, which provides students of all ethnic backgrounds the opportunity to receive free one-hour tutoring sessions in several Asian languages. \n"This semester we are offering tutoring in five different languages. The culture center's tutors are students, IU instructors and even local community members," said Babita Upadhyay, a program and administrative assistant at the Asian Culture Center. \nThe culture center brings together Asian students from a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. \n"The relationship between American-Asian and international-Asian students is very complex," Castillo-Cullather said. "We try to bridge that gap through positive interaction."\nCultural enlightenment is one of the center's primary goals. \n"We educate people who are relatively ignorant of Asian culture. I am often amazed to see people's perceptions of Asian culture," Upadhyay said. \nThe center sponsors luncheons with discussion topics ranging from Asian recipes to cultural stereotypes. \nThe center also offers a program called "Responding to Incidents of Casual, Everyday Racism," which provides students an outlet to seek support whenever they encounter racism at IU. \n"(The program) provides an outlet through which students can share their experiences and offer supportive solutions to each other," Castillo-Cullather said.\nAs IU's Asian student population continues to grow, the center strives to achieve the monetary support to keep up. The center is funded by the IU Office of Academic Support and Diversity but is looking for funding outside of the University, Castillo-Cullather said.\nHo said the IU Asian Student Union has taken steps to expand all aspects of ACC services, such as establishing more scholarships for Asian students and laying the groundwork for a possible expansion of the center's building. \n"There is nowhere for us to go but up," Ho said.