By Sherwin Esguerra
The Thai Student Association (TSA) returns to the University of Maryland years after its dissolution with plans to celebrate Thai culture and provide another safe space for the Asian community on campus.
TSA was one of many Asian student organizations on campus before its eventual end in the early 2010s. The Association has returned to the UMD community after a group of three friends officially registered it over the summer.
Junior public health student and co-president Veerapetch Petchger realized it was hard for Thai students to connect at UMD despite the presence of a large and well-knit Thai community in the D.C. metropolitan area, which includes several Buddhist temples.
“It was kind of ironic that there was really no organization to represent that. From there, I started looking through other TSAs to see if there are any across the nation, and it turns out there are,” said Petchger. “So, I just felt like I really wanted to start one.”
Narongrit Dulsaeng, a sophomore information science student and co-president of TSA, had a similar sentiment. Although there are many Asian student organizations to choose from, it can be difficult to find a strong sense of belonging for those who don’t share the same ethnicity as the majority of the organization, Dulsaeng said.
Dulsaeng and Petchger are childhood friends and attended the same Buddhist temple growing up. For Petchger, it was a community to turn to every week until the COVID-19 pandemic started.
“When we were little, we learned stuff like Thai language, Thai classical music, dance, all that stuff. We just thought it would be cool if we just shared it,” Dulsaeng said.
Sophomore materials engineering student and secretary Dinh Huynh is Vietnamese, and was in full support of helping Dulsaeng and Petchger start TSA because there are many cultural aspects shared between Thailand and Vietnam, he said.
“The funny thing is, we had two or three weeks left, at most, to complete the new club applications for SGA,” said Huynh. “So we were just like, ‘Let’s do it, full send. We have two weeks to lose anyway.’”
Completing the application and officially re-registering the organization on campus was a tedious process, which was made easier by the Student Org Resource Center’s (SORC) responsiveness over the phone and email. According to Dulsaeng, most of the work was done through SORC’s website, which provided him with a list of necessary tasks to complete.
One of these tasks was constructing a constitution for the organization.
“That was the one thing that took the longest,” said Dulsaeng. “I didn’t even realize it could technically be like two pages, but we ended up with twelve pages.”
Student organizations are also required to have a faculty advisor. Adjunct lecturer Matthew Regan attended the same temple as Petchger and Dulsaeng and participated in the Thai community during his undergraduate years at The Catholic University of America.
Regan provides support when he can, but “students should lead student organizations,” he said. “I don’t want to be in the way or directing anything because they know what students want, what they need.”
Funding from the Student Government Association also plays a significant role in student organizations. According to Petchger, the forms for funding required dates and outlines of supplies for events, which were difficult for TSA to provide because of its recent official status.
Petchger felt that the requirements were catered toward well-established organizations and made it difficult for newer associations like TSA to receive funding.
“But I think for now, [TSA] has a way to not necessarily depend on SGA funding, but I want the organization to reach a point where we can use it,” Petchger said.
TSA is now focusing on member recruitment and retention. However, Dulsaeng, Huynh and Petchger found it quite easy to recruit additional executive board members.
Sophomore economics major and internal vice president Alexander Cross initially wanted to connect with other Laotian students on campus, but ultimately got involved with TSA because of the major cultural similarities between Laos and Thailand.
Peampat Suphaphon is a freshman mechanical engineering major and the external vice president of TSA. It is generally rare for freshmen to hold an executive board member position in an Asian organization, especially this early in the fall semester.
Suphaphon grew up with Petchger and Dulsaeng and dedicated a lot of time to volunteering at the temple. He also has an internship with a Thai-owned recycling company in Baltimore.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time giving back to my community, and I wanted to continue that in college,” said Suphaphon. “TSA provided me with the perfect opportunity to do that.”
The Association hosted its first event, a boba bar, on Friday, September 23. A large mass of people gathered at Washington Quad, waiting patiently for their bubble tea. Dulsaeng said the event’s planning was quite sloppy, but they were able to get everything under control in the end.
The event was initially supposed to be based around mango sticky rice. However, due to mangoes being out of season, TSA decided to serve bubble tea. Despite all the work that went into brewing the tea and gathering all the necessary materials, Dulsaeng said it was a learning curve.
Dulsaeng hopes that TSA can continue to grow and gain a dedicated general body.
“It’s a little hard when the Thai community is very small, and finding them is like finding a needle in a haystack,” said Dulsaeng. “But I want to do something with this. I want to make it bigger than before and keep improving.”
Featured Image: Students line up for Thai Tea, Thai coffee and Thai Green Tea at TSA’s boba bar event on the Washington quad at University of Maryland, Friday, September 23, 2022. Photo by Sherwin Esguerra.