General Information

The Sixth Annual Pan-Collegiate Conference on the Mixed-Race Experience is scheduled to be held during the weekend of April 12-14, 2002 on our campus (primarily Rockefeller Hall) at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. The conference will officially start at 6 pm on Friday, April 12, and finish at 1 pm on Sunday, April 14. The conference will bring an extraordinary opportunity to network with other 'mixies,' and talk about issues important to us all. For more information on what we are about, please see the "Why have a conference?" section or consult the CHSA or BLEND webpages.

Register now!

Register and let us know you're coming. For a list of speakers and the current conference schedule please click here.

Official conference hotel

NEW: The Conference hotel is officially the Clarion University Hotel and Conference Center, located close to Cornell's campus, and not far from Ithaca's airport. If you are not staying with students, and would prefer to stay in a hotel, this would be a good option. We are being given a group discount of $89/night for a double room; call Clarion Group Reservations at (607) 257-3100 and indicate you are participating in the Pan- collegiate Conference. Free shuttle service between the hotel, airport, and campus will be provided upon your request. Hurry to book, there is limited space available!

Brief Overview

As the most distinguished national conference of its kind, the Pan-collegiate Conference on the Mixed Race Experience will this year attract many representatives of our nation's multiracial youth, to talk about the marked characteristics that 'mixed experiences' tend to share. The expression 'mixed race experience' refers to the wide array of experiences of biracial, multiracial and multiethnic people, as well as transracial adoptees and interracial families. In accordance with the goals of the CHSA and Blend student groups, the Conference will aim to create a secure forum for open dialogue of topics related to the mixed-race experience.

The Conference was first created with the vision of providing a secure and accepting forum for discussing these diverse experiences, which have in common some confusion in today's world, and also to draw attention to our community. Since its establishment in 1996, the scale of the Conference has grown considerably up to last April's conference at Harvard, which attracted unprecedented numbers. We hope to continue this trend, by bringing an ever larger group to Cornell this April. We firmly believe that discussion of mixed race subjects in a larger group of people enhances discussion by introducing even more varied viewpoints.

News

March 13
We've posted the complete timetable for the conference and updated many of the speaker bios.

March 5
Register now! The registration deadline is April 1. Speaker bios and event schedule have been posted; complete timetable coming soon. Finishing touches will be placed on the website this weekend.

January 29
Major additions to the website. Although most of the necessary information about the Conference is available, the website's content will continually be updated between now and the Conference weekend.

December 17
Registration forms have been posted. Expect some major additions soon, as winter break starts very soon.

November 16
As you can see, our website is currently under construction. Please check back frequently over the next several weeks, as we continue to remodel and update the website.

About Cornell Hapa

The Cornell Hapa Student Association is a young organization on campus, but has already attracted a strong membership. Although we have many ideas and plans for the future, our primary goals remain to create a secure forum for discussion and personal resolution of questions raised by being mixed, and to draw attention to the emerging mixed race experience in general. While we're certain that there exist many kinds of mixed 'experiences,' we also realize that all share certain characteristics, each raising questions having no clear answer. Addressing these questions from multiple perspectives enables mixed people to come to a reasoned conclusion that might further stabilize their lives. This process is valuable and moreover, urgent, given the rapid growth of an emerging mixed race community.

About BLEND

B.L.E.N.D. (Bi-/Multiracial Lineages, Ethnicities & Nationalities Discussion) was founded to promote and celebrate the multi-racial experience in the Cornell and Ithaca community and in the larger society as a whole. We also aim to promote multicultural education, racial awareness, and inter-racial harmony. In keeping with this latter goal, we have instituted a branch program called MIRAR (Multicultural Initiative for Racial Awareness through Reading). The program's goals are to foster racial awareness in children, and in the process, hone these children's reading skills through the implementation of books that incorporate multiracial, inter-racial, and multicultural themes. We feel that it is important for children not to be racially preoccupied, but racially aware, especially in a society that pays so much attention to the social construct of "race." We feel that by fostering a sense of racial awareness, children will be able to appreciate and celebrate both their similarites and their differences, and will learn that in different social and family structures (i.e. the inter-racial or multicultural family), love and respect have no "color."