May marks Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) and Jewish American Heritage Month, offering Upper School students an opportunity to learn about others’ unique cultures and traditions. To celebrate, The Vanguard brought together leaders from the affinity spaces: Lucy Song, Shay Patel and Austin Fuchs (all ’26), the presidents of the Asian American Student Association (AASA), South Asian Student Alliance (SASA) and Jewish Cultural Club (JCC), respectively. —Vartan Arakelian ’26
What is the importance of the school celebrating and recognizing your heritage month?
Shay: Our school recognizes a lot of different heritages. It spreads awareness, and our April assembly gave more information to the rest of the school because a lot of people don’t know about our heritage.
Lucy: I’d agree. I think BB&N is made up of a lot of different cultures, and it’s a very diverse school, and so it’s important to recognize each individual culture.
Austin: I think it’s very important, because although I believe that we should be recognized and acknowledged 365 days out of the year, there should be a devoted time to learn about our history, to explore our culture, to talk, think about and discuss our influence on other cultures, what we do and how we operate our lives and how that’s different but still important in our modern world.
How did your affinity space celebrate your heritage month?
Lucy: AASA and SASA did a joint event with a lot of food, and we just spent time together.
Shay: We also did the assembly that was part of our celebration.
Lucy: In reality, it’s all one month, AANHPI month, so I’m not sure why the school separates SASA and AASA. I think it might be because there is a lot of kids, but it’s nice to come together, to celebrate as a whole.
Shay: We also got to see a lot of similarities celebrating together. More sense of unity, too.
Austin: We had an assembly in May. It was more of a fun assembly where we had questions, but it was really important to spread the word and educate people on stuff they probably don’t know. We’ve had our weekly meetings where we discuss what’s going on in the world, what life’s like for people right now and how we can better it.
What are some traditions and values from your heritage?
Shay: I enjoy celebrating Diwali, the Festival of Lights.
Lucy: The importance of family, especially in Korea, is something I value.
Austin: I value community. Being Jewish is all about accepting everybody and putting yourself second, making sure everybody’s happy around you but also standing up for yourself. Being a minority in the world right now, it’s very important to stay true to who you are and always keep, in this case, Judaism in the back of your head.
How do you think celebrating your heritage month helps foster understanding and inclusion among students?
Lucy: I think the assembly did a good job of sharing some aspects of Asian culture with the broader school, which I don’t think people would know otherwise.
Shay: I agree with Lucy. The assembly spread more information or brought us to people’s minds. It’s helpful for people to understand more about our culture rather than just see it from the outside and not know what it is.
Austin: BB&N is a very diverse community. I feel like we’re a melting pot of all different people. It’s important, not only in my case, to learn about other people. Understanding different people and different cultures builds a stronger and safer community.
What motivated you to become a leader of your affinity group?
Shay: I always want to help bring the SASA community together. I think a leadership position helps and gives more leeway in trying to organize stuff.
Lucy: In my freshman and sophomore years, I really enjoyed going to AASA. The leaders do a great job of uniting everyone in that space, so I thought the leadership opportunity would give me the chance to do that and help bring the community together even more.
Austin: I’m one of those kids who’s not afraid to speak up, and I took it upon myself because I saw that there were a lot of things that either needed to be changed or built upon in the school. I wanted to be a leader because I am very passionate about what we’re doing as a community and what it means to be Jewish.
How did your affinity space engage with the school community during your heritage month?
Lucy: Just spreading information like the assembly did, One School One World and just celebrating our culture. But AASA itself has also grown. More people are coming to our meetings during this month.
Shay: For our trivia questions at the assembly, we made them interactive so that students would retain more information.
Austin: We had the assembly, and we’ve had various meetings discussing our culture. Nowadays, it’s very difficult to balance culture and holidays and stuff that brings joy and obviously what’s going on with the rest of the world. I feel like our room, our community, has done a very good job this month of having that balance.
