For many Middle Eastern students who feel a deep connection to their heritages, the ability to identify as such in their University of California application is very important.
Currently, Middle Easterners, including Arabs, Afghanis, Armenians and Iranians, must select Caucasian when filling out the undergraduate application, said Lilit Azarian, vice president of the Armenian Student Union.
Although identifying as Caucasian is not incorrect, Azarian added, many students feel that they should be able to identify with a more specific group rather than with such a broad ethnic category.
“(Many of us) are very tied to our ethnic and family backgrounds,” she said. “It’s a part of us that should be represented on our applications.”
Though students only began initiating the campaign a few months ago, the topic has been discussed for about a year, said Yasaman Chehroudi, president of the Iranian Student Group.
She added that it will try to follow the example of the Asian Pacific Coalition’s “Count Me In” campaign in 2007, which resulted in the inclusion of 23 Asian subgroups on the UC application.
“The Asian Pacific Coalition’s campaign was one of the direct inspirations,” Azarian said. “The idea was always there, but we now see that is possible.”
Chehroudi said many student groups are coming together to support this campaign and work to benefit the cause in a variety of ways.
“We’re thinking about having a mixer and party to get people to come out, mingle, talk and sign a petition and cards,” she added.
Chehroudi also said organizers hope to speak to the UC administration to ensure that the proposal the students plan to write will be passed.
The campaign will likely expand across boundaries of the individual campuses, Azarian said.
“If it’s done on a UC level, we will also be collaborating with our sister organizations on various campuses,” Azarian said. “It wouldn’t just be a UCLA initiative, it would have the support of students from all over the UC network.”
Chehroudi said that the campaign to make “Middle Eastern” its own category with various subgroups does not reflect a desire on the behalf of the Middle Eastern students to separate themselves or express Middle Eastern superiority.
According to a University of California press statement, the university acknowledges the importance of the specification to the student data collected and will seriously consider modifying the application to allow students to identify themselves as Middle Eastern.
“Middle Eastern should be its own category because we are not treated or thought of as white, so it is illogical to be categorized that way,” Chehroudi said. She added that the statistics gathered about the number of Middle Easterners on campus could be extremely helpful to student groups and school officials.
It can be difficult to create culturally appropriate organizations or see trends about important issues such as disease without statistics about demographics, Chehroudi added.
Wayne Yang, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at UC San Diego, said the issue is important because it forces individuals associated with the UC system to contemplate how higher education can move away from the politics of exclusion and toward a redress of historical and present injustices.
“If you believe in issues in representation, it’s very important to at least generate information about admissions,” Yang said. “It’s kind of like census politics. If you’re not on the census, you are in some ways invisible as a group and can’t report injustice.”