“I’m really emphasizing that it has to be easy going,” co-leader of Asian Alliance senior Zennia Lynch said. “Because otherwise what is the point of it? I also want to emphasize the safe space as well. The goal is to talk about the issues between of all of our different affinities and then teaching the allies.”

Under Lynch, senior Sarah Jae Wershil, and senior Simran Jain, the club has taken on a new name and a new approach to last year’s Asian Alliance. The trio revamped the club as NASA — National Asian Student Affinity.

“We were just like let’s make it funny but let’s make it official,” said Lynch. “It’s fine when people call it Asian Alliance because that is what its been known for. It’s kind of just our way of being like the full name is this very serious thing, but it’s still a fun place to come and relax.”

Asian Alliance has existed previously at Parker under the leadership of graduates Lydia Sun and Tenzin Babu in the 2015-2016 school year, and graduate Sonja Vaintrub in the 2016-2017 school year. The groups, however, eventually dissolved when Vaintrub graduated.

Lynch remains passionate about Asian Alliance. “I really like the idea of Asian Alliance, and having a place to talk about these things and having like a sanctuary,” Lynch said. “So, being able to start it up again was something that I really wanted to do my senior year when I had enough time to put aside for Asian Alliance.”

The club also aims to increase dialogue on how Asians interact with each other, despite the sometimes turbulent history that each of these cultures share. “You are not just Chinese, you are not just Japanese, you also belong to the same civic group called America,” faculty sponsor and Upper School science teacher Xiao Zhang said. “How is your experience different from your relatives who are just Chinese or Japanese? Can you be that bridge? Can you be that group that reduces the tension? Rather than be that group that increases the tension between the home countries.”

In Dr. Derrick Gay’s presentation on the demographics of Parker, Zhang and the club’s leaders noticed that in some of the data there was identification of Asian groups with minority groups, and in other cases the Asian groups seemed to identify more with the majority. NASA hopes to explore the “fluid identity” that Zhang describes Asians as having.

“After the curriculum that Dr. Gay led, Sarah, Zen, and I felt very torn, as if we were being placed into pre-existing groups that were not meant for us,” Jain said. “We wanted to celebrate our cultures and share them with each other. At this point we wanted to reach out to the rest of the Asian student body to broaden the conversation.”

“You have to constantly shift, which I don’t think is a problem at all,” Zhang said. “I think that it is an actually very useful skill. But, I hope that it is something the student will do consciously, not by default and not because they are forced to.”

“It’s a sense of limbo,”, Lynch said. “We don’t know who we can talk to, so we have each other.”

The leaders also feel that the Asian experience varies greatly from other affinity groups.“There isn’t a specific place for us,” Jain said. “We are pushed into the opinions of other affinities that do not really work for us. The Asian population is so vast that we need our own place. The differences we face are not really at Parker but more so in the greater community. For example, colleges have been in the news lately for wanting to lessen the Asian population let into high selective schools.”

The plans for the revamping of Asian Alliance started last year in May when Lynch noticed that there was no attention to the fact that May was Asian Heritage Month. She first approached Zhang with the idea for the club, and Zhang, after attending the People of Color Conference in Anaheim, California the fall of last year, felt “more confident” in being able to take on the advisor role and join the effort.

The team then met with the Upper School Dean of Student Life Christian Bielizna to start the Club Charter and make NASA official. They plan for the first event to be a movie night, tentatively choosing “Mulan”, and hope that it serves as a bonding activity.

The first couple of months, starting in late September through November, are meant to be a time for the club members to get to know each other and become comfortable talking about their identity and their backgrounds.

Part of the affinity group meetings hopefully will comprise subgroups. The idea came to Zhang after he attended the Conference, where they divided the Asians into their places of origin, and the Chinese into non-Mandarin and Mandarin speaking. Lynch, however, is hesitant of this idea as she worries that the groups will not be even.

After these couple of months, NASA will begin having ally groups, where people that do not identify as Asian can learn about Asian Heritage.

“This group is unique with how we function as a both an affinity group and an alliance,” Wershil said. “Some meetings will be for just Asian or half-Asian students to talk about topics they might only want to talk about with other Asian kids. Other meetings will be open to all. Those meetings have a lot of flexibility. We’re trying to make the club as inclusive as possible, while also providing a safe environment for Asian students.”

While the meetings will vary with affinity and ally groups, the goals remains the same. “We want to bring Asian life to Parker,” Lynch said. “I know nothing about my culture, due to the fact I am adopted. And I am sure people want to learn more about theirs. I want to hear. I want to create a very inclusive environment.”

Since all of the leaders are seniors, the plans for next year are a pressing issue. In a meeting with Bielizna and Head of Upper School Justin Brandon, the leaders talked about how it is less of them planning the events, and more on them to choose designated people from the lower grades, so that, “it can stand on its own two feet when we are gone,” said Lynch.