The Indian American Students Association and the South Asian Awareness Network were quietly kicked out of an organization they both belonged to earlier this month because their leaders were members of the controversial senior society formerly known as Michigamua.
United Asian American Organizations, a network of 35 Asian/Pacific Islander student groups, passed an amendment last semester identifying the two groups as members not in good standing.
SAAN co-chair Ashish Shah and former IASA president Gopal Pai are members of the elite honor society. UAAO objected to their membership in the society because of the society’s past of appropriating Native American customs and rituals.
The only way the groups could regain membership was if the senior honor society institute a list of reforms or the leaders left the society. UAAO demanded that the society submit a formal name change, hold open meetings, publish a list of its members, stop the “tapping” process for new members and publicly apologize for its past.
UAAO chairs notified IASA and SAAN of their removal in an e-mail on Jan. 4, the deadline stated in the amendment.
IASA members declined to comment and SAAN members did not return repeated phone calls from The Michigan Daily.
The honor society was not informed of SAAN and IASA’s removal from UAAO, LSA senior Andrew Yahkind, a member of the society who often serves as its unofficial spokesman, said in an e-mail interview.
“We must express our disappointment in learning that UAAO has chosen a path of divisive exclusion rather than inclusion,” he said. “We believe that the UAAO’s decision to issue ‘demands’ and ‘deadlines,’ while holding -ing IASA and SAAN hostage and rejecting dialogue, is a practice not appropriate for inter-student
group relations.”
Yahkind said that when the society offered to hold a dialogue with UAAO last November, UAAO did not respond.
On Jan. 9, UAAO formally declined the offer in an e-mail sent to the society by a member of the UAAO governing board.
The e-mail said that discussion would not be “fruitful” because “certain organizational decisions regarding SAAN, IASA, and (the) society” had already been made.
Nafisah Ula, co-chair of UAAO, said UAAO does not have a problem with IASA and SAAN, just the members who are involved in the honor society.
Ula said the organizations can re-apply for membership whenever they want.
“But if the same circumstances apply, it would be foolish for them to re-apply today,” she said.
Membership in the society has been a problem for at least one SAAN member in the past.
After then-SAAN co-chair Neal Pancholi’s membership in the society became public in April 2005, the group forced him to resign his post.