Reflections Honors Asian Seniors

With many laughs and a few tears, eight Asian-American seniors received awards at the third annual Reflections banquet last night for the impact they made during their four years at Harvard.

“Refections 2007,” held in Pound Hall at the Harvard Law School, was a collaboration between ten Asian organizations on campus. The banquet featured Boston-based band Phil Good and Emerson College journalism professor Paul U. Niwa, who spoke about the difficulties of being an Asian-American man and urged his audience to “grab a samurai sword and chop down the bamboo ceiling.”

Thirty potential candidates for the award were nominated by their peers for having “stimulated great progress on campus,” according to the event program. The nominations were then evaluated by a committee of non-senior peers. According to selection committee member Susan H. Nguyen ’09, the committee took seven hours to narrow the pool from the 30 nominees to the eight award recipients.

“The process became easier when we established more concrete criteria,” Nguyen said. “We decided that the recipient had to have made a lasting impact, not just performed their job well.”

One of the award recipients was Jacquelyn Chou ’07, who came up with the concept of Reflections two years ago.

According to Gary Liu ’06—who introduced Chou last night—committee members had to “physically restrain her from sabotaging her own candidacy.”

Chou said that she was flattered and “a little embarrassed” to win an award at an event she founded, but she also stressed the importance of Reflections to the Asian-American community.

“I’d like to think that it is a testament to the success of community-building,” Chou said.

Award recipient Arjun Vasan ’07, who has served as the co-president of the South Asian Association, agreed with Chou about the positive impact of the event.

“After Reflections began, a pan-Asian identity was created,” Vasan said. “The various Asian organizations now co-sponser many more events, like the joint relief efforts for the Asian earthquakes.”

The eight seniors honored were Chou, Anant Gupta ’07, Eveleen S. Hsu ’07, Tilottama Riya Sen ’07, Edward H. Thai ’07, Vasan, Winmar Way ’07, and Khalid M. Yasin ’07.

—Staff writer Nan Ni can be reached at nni@fas.harvard.edu.