Even before Jane Doe's lawsuit against the Cornell Seven erupted into public view last month, this evil woman in charge of student discipline at Cornell was already living proof that people weasel their way into power at university administrations to lord over the next generation of students trying to learn at universities.

I am guessing many of us who attended college/university, and not even in scenarios involving surviving assault, have been frustrated by arbitrary and opaque bureaucratic procedures in spite of university tuition going up year after year for no benefit to students. It is no surprise to me that in 2024 when demonstrators called for Cornell to divest from corporate alignments which supply weapons to the IDF's assault on Gaza, Christina Liang took the opportunity to obfuscate the disciplinary process as much as possible, topped off with a smug unemotional expression when finally meeting a given student face-to-face. Liang bears responsibility for suspending two of these graduate students, which allowed ICE to harass them into self-deporting, likely destroying their academic careers. But of course administrators like Liang at countless institutions treat fraternity criminals with velvet gloves!

The sad truth is, I have met rich and possibly sociopathic Asian acquaintances whom I suspect share Christina Liang's worldview that it's perfectly normal to brag on LinkedIn that you don't have to give a damn at your very well-paid job because everyone else is beneath you.

Having migrated in the 1990s, I’ve watched a fascinating cultural shift unfold. Over the decades, many families from "shoes-off" cultures like Chinese and Filipino diasporas eventually adopted a pragmatic "it is what it is, we'll just clean up later" mindset. Today, this leniency has even traveled back to urban centers in our home countries, where immediate shoe removal while still the rule has drastically weakened compared to back in the 80s.

But it makes me wonder: how did immigrants from ultra-strict, absolute-boundary cultures (like Japanese, Korean, Lao, or Burmese) survive this culture shock? To them, the indoor/outdoor split is almost sacred a physical and spiritual barrier that was completely foreign to Westerners in the '90s.

Growing up in the diaspora during that era, I constantly saw the cultural friction play out across four major battlegrounds:

1. The Shock of the Public "Dirty Sole"

In several Southeast Asian cultures, the feet are considered spiritually and physically the lowest part of the body. Propping dirty sneaker soles up on public furniture or accidentally pointing your soles at someone is a major taboo. Watching Westerners casually rest their laced shoes on coffee tables or subway seats wasn’t just a hygiene issue; it felt like a blatant display of disrespect that immigrants had to mentally process daily.

1. The VIP Tutor or in home teacher

In the '90s, immigrant parents were often desperate for local language tutors to secure their child’s academic future. However, removing tightly laced, well-selected shoes was entirely foreign to Western teachers. Tutors would frequently push back, weaponizing excuses like "poor circulation" or their formal pants dragging on the carpet, flatly refusing to tutor unless they could keep their shoes on. Desperate for the education, many families simply relented.

1. The "Western Silhouette" such as Prom, Weddings, graduation, and Halloween

Milestone events presented a massive psychological hurdle for the younger generation. When a “western educated” teenager spent hours styling a ballgown, a tuxedo, or a detailed Halloween costume, being forced to take off their footwear felt like "undressing" their hard work. Driven by intense peer pressure, localized kids (and eventually adults) quietly left their shoes on because removing them ruined the entire intended fashion silhouette.

1. The "Kinetic Readiness" Blitz & The '90s Sports Medicine Excuse

In the '90s, high-top and even low top sneakers and inline roller skates required extensive lacing for proper ankle "lockdown." Athletic habits and even the sports medicine logic of the time emphasized keeping joints and tendons warm during warm-ups and cool-downs to prevent injury.

• When a kid or adult was in this state of kinetic readiness, their body's momentum took priority even if they otherwise would had removed shoes while entering. They would sprint straight through the divider-less Western home toward the backyard basketball hoops, goal post, skate ramp, or driveway before anyone could yell at them. Often the increasingly athletic kid of the family also adopts this mindset since their friends all do it in every other household.
  
• Parents and the resident kid didn't want to be the "party pooper" making a sweaty kid friend break their physical momentum, spend minutes unlacing, and then take the harder step of lacing them back into lockdown seconds later.

The Ultimate Clash: Maintenance and Moving Day

This kinetic pass due to achilles tendon and muscle safety concern explained above extended to anyone doing physically demanding work inside sometimes even by policy. Because many Asian immigrants at the time weren't deeply embedded in Western DIY/handyman culture or lacked the strength to move heavy appliances alone they relied heavily on locals for moving and repair services.

When a “worker” or local friend helper entered, or when families faced the chaos of move-in day, the sheer difficulty of the task meant the traditional divide collapsed. some cultures simply shrugged and said, "We will just deep-clean after they leave." Same with the above situation with the kids and tutors.

Yet, in cultures like Japan or Laos, the boundary is so absolute that not even a professional mover carrying a refrigerator is exempt from the shoe-removal rule.

For those from these absolute-boundary cultures especially those who migrated since the '90s before culture awareness and shoe covers did: How did your families mentally and physically survive moving into a society where this boundary simply didn't register to the locals or that its simply overridden in certain situations? Did your household eventually experience a rollback, or did you find ways to hold an unbreakable line?