What Came Before Us: Celebrating Thirty Years of WAAAAN, Williams Asian and Asian American Alumni Network
is on view now until summer 2024 in the Instruction Gallery, Special Collections (4th floor of Sawyer Library).
Curated by Lorelei Lin, Class of 2026, in collaboration with Special Collections, we invite you to visit and reflect on 30 years of WAAAAN.
2023 marked two milestones for Asians and Asian Americans in the College community: the thirtieth anniversary of WAAAAN, the Williams Asian and Asian American Alumni Network, and the establishment of an Asian American studies program after more than thirty years of student activism.
This exhibit celebrates the strength and resilience of students who have worked for Asian and Asian American visibility on campus and the inclusion of our narratives in the academic canon. By highlighting the myriad ways in which student leaders created space for Asian and Asian American joy; the debts owed by the Asian American Studies Movement to previous and concurrent movements by marginalized communities at the College; and the forms of opposition that activists have faced from within the College community throughout history, this exhibit resists efforts to co-opt the narrative of student activism for institutional purposes.