To Grace Ryu, the pain was like “suffering in a silo.”
That’s how the associate director of the East Asian Studies Center at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences describes the days following a mass shooting in Atlanta in March that targeted Asian women. The attack came a year into a pandemic that has been used to fuel anti-Asian hate.
Ryu wanted to do something, anything, about the shooting. She wanted a community where she could process anxiety, fight hatred and give others a safe place to find solace together.
She knew that dozens — if not hundreds — of Asian and Asian American faculty and staff work at USC, and many might want support. But they had no formal way of coming together.
“We were all angry and sad on our own; not knowing where to go, how to voice this or how to respond,” Ryu said. Although there are student associations like the Asian Pacific American Student Assembly or institutions like Asian Pacific American Student Services, USC had no equivalent organization for faculty and staff.
Thanks to the commitment of staff organizers, though, that has changed. USC employees and educators now can come together through the new Asian Pacific Islander Faculty and Staff Association, or APIFSA.
Read the full story about how APIFSA was created at USC News.