Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 5/5/08 Section: News

Media Credit: photo illustration by Lindsay Bryant

The sidewalks are littered with them - so many faces.

You might be able to pick them out - by the colors of their skins, the colors of their hair, the colors of their eyes - and, judging by appearance, place them into one ethnic group or another.

But then there is Lina Jenssen, 24, an exchange student from Germany. Her father is German, but her mother is Filipino.

Jenssen said she used to feel more connected to her German culture since her life was there, but then she studied last semester in the Philippines, her mother's home country, and developed a strong fondness for that heritage, too. Where does she fit in? What does she claim?

"I don't know, I am divided," she said.

Now, the U.S. Department of Education is changing the way it collects and reports racial and ethnic data - which means that most multi-racial students, like Jenssen, will be able to check more than one box on the list.

Beginning in the 2010-11 school year, non-Hispanic students in the U.S. will have the ability to check all races that apply - something the current system doesn't require. Right now, schools are required to report only one ethnicity per student, out of seven major ethnicities, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

At SJSU, students are asked if they claim a secondary ethnicity, but responses to the question are not tracked for any university or government purposes, according to the Office of Institutional Research. In the semesters since Fall 2002, a total of 73 students have chosen a secondary ethnicity.

Jenssen, a graduate student in mass communications, however, said she couldn't recall a time when she had to choose between her two ethnicities.

"I am proud of both nationalities, and I would always stand up to both of them." If push came to shove, she said she would choose her country of citizenship, Germany.

But not everyone is so attached to their ethnicity.



"When people ask," said I-Ting Liu, 23, "I say I am Chinese."

She was born in Taiwan but moved to California when she was a month old.

"I feel the 'I-am-an-American' response - that is a given," she said.

Though Liu, a senior social science major, is among 2,836 other students this semester who, by appearance, are Chinese, culturally, Liu said she is an American through and through, even down to the way she dresses - which, she said, is radically different from how Asians in Asian countries dress.



"My brother thinks I hate my people" - she said she feels no allegiance to it - "and sometimes I wonder if it's true," Liu said.

While she said she doesn't feel bad about not being Asian enough, she only feels guilty when her parents say it. On the other hand, Vanessa Diaz has never been to Cuba, the homeland of her parents, but adamantly identifies herself as Cuban.

"I always say I am Cuban. Like, I've just been raised to say I'm from Cuba," Diaz said.

Besides Diaz, 30 other students at SJSU identify as primarily Cuban, but the junior liberal studies major from Sylmar, Calif., more resembles a Californian girl than a Hispanic one. Enunciating with an almost unidentifiable accent, she speaks "the Cuban dialect of Spanish," but her ever-so-slight manner of speaking doesn't point to it.

Diaz, unlike Liu, is swift to embrace her cultural heritage.

"I like the Cuban culture," she said. "And the music - it's not all me, but I definitely find it interesting."

Despite the change in the Department of Education's collecting and reporting process, Diaz said she will tick the same box she always has: Hispanic.

A number of these students find themselves united not in their differences, but in their commonalities.

"It is just the experiences we share," said Billal Asghar, 22, a self-identified American with direct Pakistani roots.

"For example, I've met some Mexican people and we have some of the same habits. Even the jokes, or the time or amount of food we eat is the same."

Diaz said she thought that language was the unifying bond among so many identities.

Asghar, a senior global studies and health science major, moved with his family to Pakistan when he was five "to experience the culture and the land they (his parents) came from," he said.



"I feel like I was blessed to go back to Pakistan," Asghar said, "just seeing where my parents grew up and having that experience" - it is one he said he recommends.

But after making the adjustment moving to Pakistan, Asghar had to make another when his parents chose to move back to California to be close to the other side of the family.

"I remember when I first came back (to the United States) I always wanted to go outside, because, in Pakistan, that is all we do. There is no such thing as, 'Oh, we can't go out it's dangerous.'"

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