South and Southeast Asian Studies Community at UC Berkeley Celebrate, School Won’t Close Library

After massive uproar from the Berkeley community and beyond, UC Berkeley has withdrawn its plan to shutter its much-beloved 50-year-old South/Southeast Asia Library, or S/SEAL, in order to turn the area into more office space.

The university issued a call for comments on their proposal on March 8 to the university community, with a deadline to submit comments by April 9, but called off the potential closure more than two weeks before the original deadline in the face of mounting pressure.

Monday’s announcement has “brought untold relief” said Paula Varsano, chair of the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies. “The immediate outcry that the proposal provoked, not just on this campus or in our state, but from around the world, was so heartfelt and so powerfully expressed,” adding that “the repercussions of moving forward with the plan would have been much more severe than they [the university and library leadership] had imagined.”

Varsano thanked all those who advocated on behalf of preserving the “precious resource.”

The S/SEAL is a 2,200-square-foot room on the first floor of the school's Doe Library. Its collection covers 19 countries, represents over 30 languages and is made up of roughly 6,400 reference materials and periodicals, according to the school.

Those who use the S/SEAL describe it as a cozy and intimate space — a space that's more than just to study or check out books.

"It's a place where they can find a sense of community," said Khatharya Um, an associate professor in the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies program who also teaches and conducts research at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. "It's the only dedicated space on this campus for them."

Under the now-scrapped proposal, the S/SEAL would've made room for more offices, and the small library's collections, services and staffing would've been integrated "with the rest of Doe Library," according to the call for comments announcement.

In other words, the S/SEAL would've been swallowed up by the larger library system and no longer provide a single dedicated space for South and Southeast Asian works.

The announcement prompted a swift and vocal mobilization. The ripples traveled beyond the school's — and even the nation's — borders. Students, staff, faculty and alumni amassed support from thousands.

A petition to save the S/SEAL has garnered more than 8,500 signatures so far.

Um says the growing and highly diverse South Asian and Southeast Asian student population on campus were, among others, at the core of this mobilization.

UC Berkeley declined to speak to KQED on Monday afternoon, and announced it was withdrawing its proposal to close S/SEAL later that evening.

University Librarian Jeffrey MacKie-Mason said since opening the public comment period two weeks ago, they "received substantial input from scholars at Berkeley and beyond, and discussions on this feedback began almost immediately. We spent over a week consulting with decision makers; the decision that resulted from those discussions was announced Monday."

He said, "As soon as it became clear that the university had enough information to make a decision on the proposal, there was no reason to prolong the process."

A Second Home; A Space for Rediscovery

Kashi Gomez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. She's been a Cal student since 2009, when she began her undergraduate studies. And for the past 12 years, the S/SEAL — a room that fits only 40 seats and the university refers to as "the smallest of our campus libraries" — was to Gomez a place of solace.

As a first-generation college student who opted to live in an apartment in South Berkeley because dorms were too expensive, Gomez spent a considerable amount of time at the S/SEAL. She didn't have the social community one builds when living in a dorm, and it was easier for her to camp out at the library than traverse back and forth between her home and school.

To Gomez, the S/SEAL felt like "a space that's mine. It was a place that I felt really connected to, that made me feel like I was part of a community, and I hadn't found that elsewhere."

So when the university library announced on March 8 its plan to shutter the S/SEAL, Gomez felt a deep personal sadness.

Rose Schweis, an undergraduate student in the Southeast Asian Studies Department who's in her last semester at Cal, moved to the U.S. when she was 5 years old, and says, like "a typical immigration story," there was an expectation for her and her sister to move away from their Thai roots and instead assimilate. "And usually in America, that means closer proximity to whiteness," she said.

The S/SEAL gave Schweis access to something she didn't have before: resources to her cultural history. Resources centralized in one location and carefully curated by the staff.

As a result, the space holds a special place in her heart and was integral to her "process of rediscovery." And she hoped other Southeast Asian students like herself would have the opportunity to embark upon a similar journey.

She, and many others, said the university's reasoning to close the S/SEAL because it "attracts the lowest foot traffic" felt like the school was betraying its values to celebrate diversity.

Varsano, the department chair, showed deep concern about the message S/SEAL's closure would send to the Asian community during a time when there have been increasing reports anti-Asian racism and violence against the AAPI community.

"There's this terrible irony that while the campus absolutely seems to be behind these values [of diversity, equity and inclusion], that they would actually eliminate one of the rare spaces that serves this community both intellectually and culturally," Varsano said.

Last Wednesday, UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ released a letter in support of the Asian American community and condemning the shootings in Atlanta, Georgia, that left eight people dead, six of whom were Asian women.

Varsano, and many others, wrote letters to administrators, library officials and the Chancellor, asking they reconsider the closure.

Dismantling the S/SEAL would be "reinforcing the logic that's behind a lot of the the violence and discrimination against Asians and Asian Americans in this country" both in the present and in the past, said Trent Walker, an alum of UC Berkeley, where he earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist studies and now teaches at Stanford University.

He said the loss of that space would contribute to the "erasure and marginalization of Asians and Asian Americans in American society" by devaluing languages and cultures that aren't Western, European and connected with white people.

South and Southeast Asia represent more than 19 countries and have about 2.5 billion people. "A huge proportion of the world. And yet, this is a part of the world that many Americans know very little about," and they're the "homeland of many vibrant diaspora communities, particularly in the Bay Area," Walker said.

Kathleen Gutierrez, also an alum of UC Berkeley who earned a Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian Studies and is now teaching at UC Santa Cruz, said while she's pleased by the university's decision to withdraw its proposal and look for space elsewhere, the need for students, faculty, alumni and others to fight for a dedicated learning space is "an all-too-common experience for marginalized fields of study."

Um, the associate professor, says the UC Berkeley student community is highly diverse, but South and Southeast Asian students are often lumped in with the larger Asian group, and that "inherent diversity and complexity of the Asian American student population is often lost to the administration" and makes many of those students feel "invisible, marginalized and isolated on this campus."

Um says the school's decision to preserve the S/SEAL serves as "an important statement that they [South and Southeast Asian students] matter."