Scope and Contents

The Asian American Coalition collection primarily documents the first ten years of the organization’s existence from 1998 to 2008 with a smaller percentage of documents being from after 2009 to 2014. The collection contains documents such as the founding constitution, an issues paper which laid out why the organization was necessary, internal emails between the original student leaders which highlight their goals as an organization, communications with the University administration where they expressed many of their demands to the University, fliers and meeting notes for the various events they hosted on campus and in the community, and early newspaper coverage of the organization from the Daily Iowan.

Scope and Contents The collection consists of one oral history interview with V Fixmer-Oraiz conducted in 2023. In the interview, Fixmer-Oraiz discusses their childhood, including growing up in a military family, living in Panama in 1989 during the US invasion, and coming out as gay in high school and the role played in their life by a supportive coach and teacher. The interview covers Fixmer-Oraiz’s educational path, including their experiences researching in the Philippines as a Fulbright scholar and a biracial Filipino American person. They discuss their urban planning career, with reference to Iowa water quality issues and the Johnson County Historic Poor Farm project. Fixmer-Oraiz also discusses their campaign and service as a Johnson County supervisor, including conflict between county and state-level regulations and their attempts to support LGBTQ+ rights at the county level, as well as how their identity as a nonbinary trans person affected their campaign. Fixmer-Oraiz discusses political...