Asian-American students' use of a university student-affairs office

College Student Journal, Sept, 2002 by Raymond K. Yang, Steven R. Byers, Linda M. Ahuna, Kimberly S. Castro

Asian-American students could benefit from the support provided by student affairs offices that serve ethnic minorities, but they might eschew the help if they accept the stereotype of the "model student". We surveyed Asian-American students on a university campus to assess the extent to which they used this type of office. Two scales, one measuring Basic Human Needs, the other, an original scale asking students to compare their lives now to their lives in their families-of-origin were used to assess student characteristics. Office use was positively correlated with students' valuation of their families-of-origin. Older and more advanced students used the office less.

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The influx of Asian-American students onto university campuses has steadily increased over the years, more so than for any other ethnic minority (Takagi, 1992). The increase is reflective of demographic changes in the general population (Hsia, 1988; Kuo & Roysircar-Sodowsky, 1999; L.C. Lee, 1998), cultural and familial values related to the high valuation of formal education (e.g., Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992), and increased efforts to recruit and support minority students (Cuyjet & Liu, 1999). On-campus political machinations attempting to control this. influx (e.g., Sun, 1997, Takagi, 1992) and broad community sentiment opposing policy-level support for minority admissions (e.g., California Proposition 209, "Prohibition Against Discrimination or Preferential Treatment ..." in 1996) have affected this trend, but not substantially. Thus, the upward trend in enrollments for most ethnic minority groups will probably continue (Cf. Haynes, 2001).

As with other ethnic classifications, there are many cultural groups colligated under the rubric "Asian-American" (Yoshioka, Tashima, Chew, & Maruse, 1981; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1992). In some cases, these cultural groups (e.g., Chinese, Filipino, Pakistani, Vietnamese) hold different views on social issues as well as share common perceptions. They identify themselves both as culturally distinctive groups and as panethnic Asian-Americans (Lien, 2001). In the context of college campuses, these groups are typically melded and proffered services as a group. This is true for other ethnic minority students.

Cultural Adaptation

On the university campus, Asian-Americans, among ethnic minorities, must often cope with the stereotype of the proverbial "model minority"--they are high achieving, studious, and demure (Sue, 1999)--and therefore, unlikely to be victimized by prejudice. Like all stereotypes, there is some data to support this, especially in mathematics performance (Hsia & Peng, 1998). Nonetheless, the overarching stereotype has been substantially deconstructed: As with all groups, there is a range of abilities and interests among Asian-Americans (e.g., S.J. Lee, 1996; Takaki, 1996). And like other minorities in the larger community and on the university campus, Asian-Americans are subject to and report acts of discriminatory treatment ranging from discourtesies by strangers, to workplace mistreatment and nonpromotion, to lethal violence (Alvarez & Yeh, 1999; Kuo & Roysircar-Sadowsky, 1999; L.C. Lee, 1998; Okamura & Tsutsumoto, 1998; Sandhu, Kaur, & Tewari, 1999).

The concept of "acculturation" has a deconstructed past. The traditional and most common-sense notion of the term is applied to individuals and groups who emigrate to a host culture. Immigrant minorities adapt the practices of the host culture and in doing so, slowly lose the customs of their original culture (Sue, Mak, & Sue, 1998). More recent and theoretically oriented models posit a stage process in which an individual egocentrically accepts a majority posture, then, is rejected by and rejects that posture, and finally discovers a true self-identity (see Kurasaki (1999), Kuo & Roysircar-Sodowsky (1999), and Sue, Mak, & Sue (1998) for reviews of these models). These developmental processes ultimately move an individual to an identity associated with specific cultural practices. These practices can reflect more than a single cultural identity (Sodowsky & Lai, 1998; Roysircar-Sodowsky & Maestas, 2000): It is possible to maintain (1) a bicultural identity; (2) to identify primarily with one culture and secondarily with another; and, (3) it is possible to be marginalized from both cultures. These newer models of cultural adaptation have more breadth than the common-sense model. The new models can appraise an individual's retention of original cultural practices in the context of a host culture (Hong, Morris, Chiu, & Benet-Martinez, 2000); the older models cannot do this (Rogler, 1999; Sue, 1999).

Oetting and Beauvais' (1990) two-dimensional model of cultural identity is an example of a newer model: They define ethnic identity as orthogonal to majority identity. This allows for a person to be highly identified both with a minority group and the majority group. Or, a person can be weakly identified with both groups (i.e., anomic, and similar to being marginalized). The advantage of these models are their versatility: Persons can be classified in terms that are not mutually exclusive; they preclude the negative correlation between minority and majority identity that is inherent in most assessments. The advantage to Oetting and Beauvais' model is its orthogonality--a correlation of zero between identification with one culture versus another.