Student Leader Strives for Racial Harmony

Cal Lutheran student Kim Wee is keeping very busy in his senior year.

An economics major with a 3.5 grade point average, Wee is taking a full load of classes as he studies to be an investment banker.

And since last month, the 23-year-old has been student body president of the Thousand Oaks university’s 1,370 full-time undergraduate students.

Wee, a Singapore native who has also lived in Malaysia and Scotland, is the university’s first student body president to come from the ranks of its international students.

His diverse upbringing, which includes a two-year stint in the Singapore army, has prompted Wee to make racial and ethnic harmony one of three hallmarks of his yearlong term as student leader. He also wants to encourage enhanced community relations and greater student involvement in academic affairs.

“As part of [students’] education, it’s important for them to experience living with students from different backgrounds,” he said. “The United States as a whole is very diverse. Problems can arise with people growing up segregated. Stereotypical views can be perpetuated more easily.”

A member of the Asian Club, Wee said he wants to encourage his group and the other three international and minority student organizations--the African American Student Union, Latin American Student Organization and the United Students of the World--to work together, promoting a greater understanding of people from different ethnic backgrounds.

“I try setting an example--by not sticking with any type of people,” Wee said. “I don’t see any easy answer.”

The numbers of international students at Cal Lutheran University fluctuates each year, according to Lynda Fulford, a university spokeswoman.

The 88 international students currently enrolled come from 26 countries and represent 6.4% of the student body.

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Wee, who at the time was an army corporal, attended a college fair that attracted schools from all over the world. A U.S. recruiter suggested Cal Lutheran, which is the only university he applied to.

Fulford said Wee’s election as student body president reflects more on his character and background, than on an increased minority presence on campus.

“He’s had some life experience, and that comes through in terms of his leadership capabilities,” she said.

Wee’s international education began in the ninth grade when his parents enrolled him in the Uplands Boarding School in Malaysia. Two years later, he enrolled in the Edinburgh Academy in Scotland to complete his high school education.

“My parents preferred a more liberal educational system than the one the state offered in Singapore. [There] the government likes to control the curriculum,” said Wee.

His parents, a lawyer and a legal assistant, were concerned that there were few private schools in the Republic of Singapore, a nation of nearly 3 million people in Southeast Asia.

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Upon graduation from Edinburgh, Wee returned to Singapore to begin a mandated 2 1/2-year stint with the armed forces. His boot camp consisted of taking a lot of orders, doing a lot of push-ups and sit-ups and taking more orders, he said.

“When you’re forced to go into the military, people are usually glad to get it over with,” Wee said. “It occupies all of your time with only a token amount of compensation.”

The pay, he said, was the equivalent of $120 a month. By comparison, Army recruits in this country earn $833 a month.

The discipline Wee learned in boarding school and in the army was a benefit, said his former roommate, Faisal Maju, a junior from Pakistan.

“He’s very focused,” Maju said. “You need that when you’re in a leadership position.”

One also needs to be outgoing. Yet Wee described himself as a shy individual when he entered Cal Lutheran in the fall 1994.

His frustration with what he considered a lack of student input in faculty decision-making prompted him to run for the student senate at the end of his sophomore year.

He won, but later felt his voice was still not being heard. So Wee challenged three other students last spring for the post of student body president.

“At this position, definitely more people will listen,” Wee said.

He spent the week before the elections vigorously campaigning and won by a narrow margin.

Maju said he is not surprised that Wee was victorious.

“He’s not afraid to make decisions,” Maju said. “He’s made a lot of effort to interact with as many students as he can, just to get their ideas.”

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To ensure greater interaction, Wee is setting up the student government’s first Web site, which will include photographs and information on him, the 15 student senators and 20 student representatives who organize campus activities.

“[We] will be more accountable,” he said.

Wee is also looking for student volunteers to help him raise money for the Salvation Army this Christmas season.

After his graduation next spring, Wee must return to Singapore to serve the remaining six months he has pledged to the army, which granted him an extended leave to attend college.

Wee said he will then return to the United States to look for a job in investment banking. Eventually, he would like to attend an Ivy League graduate business school.

The three years Wee has been at Cal Lutheran represent the longest period he has lived in a single place since he was 12.

Having lived in four nations, Wee said, allows him to serve as a role model for other international students who are away from home for the first time.

“It makes adjusting to different places easier,” he said. “I don’t have any problems being away from home.”