Actual NCORE, Part 1

I suppose you are all wondering what I exactly did at the NCORE conference in New Orleans. Well, I will tell you, but I did so much that I’m going to have to break up my explanation into two parts.

The first NCORE related thing I did in the city was go to the NCORE student scholar ceremony at Tulane University. That’s right; this awesome blogger was awarded a scholarship because the heads thought that I was a great representative for diversity. Honestly, I have no idea why they gave it to me, but you should never look a gift horse in the mouth, right? I met some pretty great people at the ceremony, and I can now add this to my resume which will help me with graduate school. Life is fantastic.

The next day was when the sessions at NCORE started. One of the sessions I attended revolved around the idea of post-racialism in today’s society. The main point here is that there are a lot of people who say we are getting close to ending racism because of some political and social achievements. However, to say this you are ignoring all other aspects of society. I thought this was a great presentation which also served as a way to prepare me for the rest of the conference. The other session I attended that day revolved around presenting the inequality in society in terms of statistics and numbers. I am a fan of statistics, so to see the inequality in number form really put it into perspective. The first day was great, but little did I know that everything would build upon that greatness.

On the second day, I stumbled upon a session that introduced me to the Fisher court case that is currently being decided in the U.S. Supreme Court. This session was presented by OiYan Poon who is not only a very beautiful lady (I kind of have a crush on her), but she is also very passionate about her work. She gave a keynote speech the previous day that informed me of some of the issues that the Asian American community has encountered. During her other presentation she related the Fisher court case to Asian Americans. I’m not one to insert my political beliefs into a blog that no one reads, but I think that the loss of affirmative action in colleges would be a bad idea. Colleges need to allow for a certain amount of diversity because it benefits no one to be around people who only look like them. I became aware of the Fisher court case at NCORE, and I am going to keep up with the news on it because I feel it will be important for colleges and possibly our entire nation.

So I learned a great deal in the first two days. The discussions our group had after each day helped as well (but that’s for tomorrow). Like I said before, each day built upon the lessons and experiences of the previous day, and the final two days were huge in my eyes.