Asian Student Alliance hosted its first-ever university-wide Lunar New Year celebration in the Black Cultural Center on Thursday to ring in the year of the dragon together as a community. 

Lunar New Year, a festival celebrated on the first new moon of the new year, is “one of the biggest celebrations in East Asia,” said Sungjin Im, faculty advisor of ASA.

ASA has been active on campus for a little over a year. In that time, they have sponsored events that specifically focus on celebrating Asian cultures while also engaging the BW community.

“This event [Lunar New Year Celebration] is a way for all of us to learn together, and create new traditions, and just come together as a BW community, not just Asian students or just Asian faculty,” said ASA president Elanna Su.

Su said that the idea for a Lunar New Year party has been in the works since ASA’s inception. 

“We always had the idea of a Lunar New Year party just because it’s a big community event and it’s something that unites a lot of  different Asian cultures,” Su said. “It’s something that we can all come together for and share our traditions.” 

This year’s Lunar New Year celebration comes just over a year after the anniversary of ASA’s creation.  

“ASA was founded very recently, just last year,” Im said. “It was created to give the Asian community at BW a sense of community and to promote knowledge and awareness.” 

While the original intent of ASA was to promote knowledge and awareness of Asian cultures, Su said that they also desired to engage students, staff and faculty from all across campus. 

“We are a community of Asian students and their allies, faculty and whoever else wants to join from the BW community to help educate the community about Asian-American culture Asian culture, and to foster that sense of community and belongingness to learn more together,” Su said. 

Im said that even though this is the first time ASA has hosted this celebration, they intend to continue with the Lunar New Year celebration and other similar events in years to come. 

ASA has also been active on campus by hosting other events since its creation, such as the ASA bonding event, a ramen night, a K-pop dance event and a partnership with the Center for Global Exploration. These events are in addition to their monthly general meetings. 

Su said that anyone in the BW community can participate in the organization. 

“One of the most important things that we have always been pushing is that you don’t have to be Asian to join,” Su said. 

ASA’s next partnership will be with the International Film Series on Feb. 17 with the showing of “Return to the Seoul.”

Last Edited Feb. 11