The cups of green glowing matcha are spreading like wildfire. Nine dollars a cup, that’s a little steep. Half the Kingwood Oxford community seems to be holding this green chalk dust as the wildfire spreads faster and faster. AAPI club leaders seem stressed, whipping up the matcha, the wooden spoon turning in slow motion as the birds are chirping in the background. This is one of many events that the AAPI club will hold this year, as they’re looking to expand their events and ideas.
The AAPI or Asian American Pacific Islander club is one of KO’s most popular clubs, led by junior President and Founder Danica De Dios, junior Vice President Ashton Binalla and sophomore co-leader Kai Scranton. I took the time to sit down with each of them as they discussed their role in AAPI and the significance of the club. As their years dwindle at KO and the events increase, they look to expand from their annual matcha event and even make more of an impact on the KO community.
It started freshman year for Danica when she noticed there were no clubs about Asian culture. She had heard that there used to be a club, but it slowly faded away, and that’s when she wanted to start her own club celebrating Asian culture. “In the beginning, it was just me,” Danica said. “Then I asked some of my friends like Ashton, because he’s been my friend since we were little kids.” Her childhood friend Ashton helped bring more of his male friends into the club to help start what we know today as AAPI.
Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Rich Mutts and Director of Admissions Susan Emery were integral in getting the group up and running. “We brought this idea to Mr. Rich,” Danica said. “Then we got connected to Ms. Emory, who also was interested in this idea, because it was a club before.” Since Ms. Emory had known that there was a club similar to AAPI in the past, she wanted to get the club back up and running and who else would be a better fit to help them start it than Mr. Rich.
AAPI is a club based around Asian culture. There are multiple different Asian backgrounds in the club for example, Danica is Filipino, Ashton is Filipino and Kai is Japanese. The main goal for the club is to help the KO community learn more about the Asian community. “Last year there was a Tenickeling dance that Ashton and Danica performed on stage to show part of their culture,” Kai explained. A big help to promote their culture is different assemblies where they can show different dances that follow their culture.
The big annual event held by Danica, Ashton and the entire AAPI club is their matcha sale. I had no idea what matcha was until they held this event last year, and now if you don’t know what it is at KO you must have been living under a rock. I wonder how they don’t sell out with almost half of KO walking around with those green cups on matcha day.
The matcha event: A hectic, crazy, fun event that brings KO together. “They’re fun to host, they’re fun to attend,” Ashton said. Ashton and Kai also held a bake sale where they sold different goods like muffins, cupcakes, brownies, etc to go along with the matcha.
“Why was the matcha so overpriced?” Ashton wondered. “Because I kind of agree with that sentiment too. I feel like if we made it like seven dollars, then we’d be able to sell more matcha, get more profit than selling less matcha, but at a higher price.”Heads up history teachers, we have some capitalism in the club.
Since Kai couldn’t help make the matcha, he had his mom make ube marshmallows. “She was able to make ube marshmallows on her own,” Kai said, “to kind of tie in with the theme of the ube matcha.” We’d all love to learn how to make Kai’s mom’s ube marshmallows. Overall, the matcha event has been one of the biggest events across campus over the last two years.
Everyone knows that too much of a good thing becomes bad, which is why it’s important to have different ideas like, food drives, fundraisers, more cultural events. The matcha is great, but imagine an event with cultural food and matcha. People might be wondering where the money goes from the matcha event; I was one of those people. “I was thinking that later this year, we could cover the leftover expenses from the matcha fundraiser for a field trip,” Danica said. “Or bring a speaker in as well.” Danica smiled, thinking about ways to make their plans meaningful for everyone. “I hope that our events are something that people on campus look forward to,” Danica said. Everyone looks forward to all of their events helping the community come together.
They have been trying to inform people more about their cultural background by holding events. “Basically what people didn’t know before,” Danica said. You might be wondering how this affects campus culture? When they held their matcha event this year, more than half the school was talking about it and curiosity started to spread throughout the community, which made people want to learn about Asian Culture. Therefore, this will help expand the community.
What’s great about this club is that you don’t have to be Asian to join it. “It’s not just the Asian kids that are part of this club,” Ashton said, “which allows for more cross school bonding with other people.”
This openness has made the club a welcoming space for anyone trying to learn anything new. These events keep bridging people in the community, creating a stronger sense of unity.
AAPI is a diverse club with a great community inside of it. Ranging from their president all the way down to the last person who has joined. When you join AAPI you will feel welcomed instantly and of course will always be part of their fun and creative events. Make sure to join AAPI if you want to try a new awesome experience — or learn how to make matcha.
