Singaporean-born first-year student, Malcolm Au, was forced to withdraw from UCLA for the next two years in order to serve for the Singaporean army. He will be spending the next two years serving in the Singaporean army with the hope that he will return to UCLA when he is finished.

Tracy Nguyen, a second-generation Vietnamese American and rising second-year business economics student at UCLA, passed away on August 1 while attending the HARD Summer Music Festival. At around 4:45 PM, Nguyen went into a seizure and was rushed to the San Dimas Community Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was 19 years old.

Association of Hmong Students’ last culture night was four years ago because they chose to devote their time and energy on high school outreaches. This year, AHS decided to do both a high school outreach program and a culture night. Each member of the Culture Night (CN) invested hours of practicing dances, creating props, and rehearsing lines to make this happen.

On May 27th, UCLA’s Feast dining hall held its second annual Anime Dinner Night, hosted by UCLA’s own Japanese Animation Club (JAC). This event celebrated Japanese animation and anime culture through displaying themed decorations and dishes as well as featuring activities throughout the night. Similar to a miniature convention, many students cosplayed as various characters from a variety of anime shows. Tokyo Otaku Mode, an international business with locations in LA, also contributed to the decorations and manned a booth outside.

On May 21, the Pacific Islands Student Association at UCLA (PISA) hosted the inaugural “Polynesian Arts and Cultural Night” at the UCLA Tennis Courts from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. During this student-run event, PISA at UCLA collaborated with peers from PISA at UC Riverside, PIA at California State University, Long Beach, PIO at Azusa Pacific University, the PI Club at Long Beach Community College, and Polynesian dance group Tupulaga.

April 30 marked the 40th anniversary of what many of those in the Vietnamese diaspora refer to as the Fall of Saigon, or Black April as my generations tends to call it, recognizing that there was much more than one day, or one month of the hells of war. Every year, the Vietnamese Student Union’s Black April Commemoration seeks to commemorate the Vietnamese diaspora’s decision to leave the Vietnamese homeland in search of a better life.