Graduating Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi (APID) students can expect cultural performances, student speakers and a sense of belonging at LBCC\u2019s APID cultural graduation celebration on Saturday 9:30-11 a.m. in room T1200 at LAC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event is a celebration of the culture and is not a commencement ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students and leaders in the APID club have expressed their excitement about the celebration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think (the event) definitely helps with feeling like all of my hard work is being seen and celebrated. As a minority, (graduating) is very rewarding in a different sense,\u201d Raevan Althea Ramos, Co-President of LBCC APID Club and graduating student, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event has been planned with Employee Resource Groups, the APID student club and Director of Student Equity Eric Becerra. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Event organizers have collaborated on many levels to ensure that diversity and inclusion were at the forefront of the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think that we have a very diverse population within APID. That is the beauty of our group because we have a lot of strength in honoring all of our different cultures, ancestries, traditions and things of that nature,\u201d Alex Luong, APID club supervisor, said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The decorations planned for the event were decided by asking students what their families did as they celebrated their life milestones or accomplishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students were able to select which of the cultural celebrations they\u2019d like to attend during the registration process for the general commencement ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe thought this process was important to have because students are self-identifying,\u201d Becerra said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was the first year that the school streamlined the RSVP process for the cultural graduations, allowing the engagement with the event to grow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attendance of the event grows every year, with it ranging from 20-30 people. It was expressed that organizers are expecting similar numbers, but hoping for 40-50 people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
2024\u2019s student speaker Ryan Nguyen joined the APID club as a student who immigrated from Vietnam with the intention of building a community for himself at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor me, I like to be involved because of friendship. It\u2019s kind of hard to make friends during CC (community college) time and there\u2019s not many active clubs at CC, so cultural clubs are a great way to be involved,\u201d Nguyen said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luong emphasized Nguyen\u2019s experience and improvement throughout his time at LBCC. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn his speech he talked about how he immigrated to the United States and barely spoke any English and it was because of his experiences with the APID student club that really empowered him, not only on the professional and practical side but on a side of acceptance and belonging\u2026stories about wanting to fit in so bad but not even knowing how to express that in literal words,\u201d Luong said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luong also expressed that these celebrations are places where students can connect with each other, as they may have similar experiences but don\u2019t necessarily identify with the same ethnic backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Students, their family, friends and faculty are encouraged to attend and RSVPs are open until Friday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Althea Ramos added that her family was very excited for the event as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy family felt very welcomed because there\u2019s no limit to how many people can come, and as APID we have very big families we have very big families so it feels good that they can all come with no limits on people to come,\u201d Ramos said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Graduating Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi (APID) students can expect cultural performances, student speakers and a sense of belonging at LBCC\u2019s APID cultural graduation celebration on Saturday 9:30-11 a.m. in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":158,"featured_media":17685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[3849,4019,6067,5830,74,29,1263,68,81],"class_list":["post-17684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-apid","tag-apid-graduation","tag-cultural-graduation","tag-kay-pham-nguyen","tag-lac","tag-lbcc","tag-lifestyle","tag-long-beach-city-college","tag-students"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Skgy-4Be","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lbccviking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Lifestyle_20230520_APIDgraduation_LGonzalez.png?fit=%2C&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17686,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17684\/revisions\/17686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}