HUMANS OF EVENTS COMMITTEE
Humans of Events Committee is a project dedicated to highlighting the thoughts and musing of FSA’s many committee members. Pondering upon contemporary topics relevant to Filipino culture, these features are designed to open up a conversation and giving a platform for committee members to talk about issues they are passionate about.
MICHAEL "REEF" STEFANICK
January 25, 2018
Michael “Reef” Stefanick is a junior at Pitt studying Biology with a minor in History. Reef considers himself mixed race - identifying as half-Filipino on his mother’s side and half-white on his father’s side. He has been a member of FSA since his sophomore year, under the recommendation of Nina Ordinario, 2017-2018 FSA President. Reef, in addition to being a member of FSA’s Events Committee, also has a unique role in which he acts as a liaison between the Filipino American Association of Pittsburgh (FAAP) and Pitt FSA due to the active involvement his family has within FAAP, primarily through his mother, Lilian Stefanick.
Given that Filipino culture has numerous influences found from other places in the world, he believes that the Philippines acts as “the melting pot of the East… There isn’t a lot of true core Filipino culture, but what encompasses Filipino culture are parts that have been adopted from anyone who has inhabited the Philippines and how that has progressed and evolved because of the other cultures and their interaction with each other.”
Contrastingly when asked about if there are aspects of Filipino culture that have migrated into other cultures in return, he claims that “there are parts of Filipino culture that are shared, but beside it being an enclosed archipelago... [there is no opportunity] to encompass other countries into Filipino culture.” However, when Filipino people migrate themselves to other countries, “it becomes self-encompassed and doesn’t take over their culture.”
Reef provides interesting commentary on how culture can be altered to appeal to more audiences. As an analogy, he compares culture as two different points of views - as a liquid and as a solid. Viewing culture as a fluid structure fetches less criticism of how Filipino culture is altered and changed. In contrast, viewing culture as a rigid structure will allow for the true richness of Filipino culture to fade. He explains how “If you’re where from that culture originated and you’re celebrating the traditions of the old time, there’s nothing wrong with remembering traditions... [however] culture changes as time goes by as people immigrate, migrate, conquer, liberate.”
VICTORIA BAQUIRAN
February 1, 2019
Victoria Baquiran is a junior at Pitt studying Information Science. She has been an active member of FSA since her freshman year. In addition of being an Events Committee member, she is one of two Co-Captains of FSA’s Tinikling Team, helping lead and coordinate last year’s tinikling fusion performance “Instruction” by Jax Jones ft. Demi Lovato at Barrio: Bahay in 2018. She had continued her involvement into the past semester where she helped lead a hip-hop performance “Follow my Lead/Bebot” at Culture Fair 2018.
Hailing from Union, New Jersey, she cites her hometown as a “very mixed neighborhood.” In terms of being surrounded by people of the same ethnicity, she had a ton of “Filipino friends, like there wasn’t any race that wasn’t represented in my town, which was awesome. I love Filipino food, grew up with all that, all the Filipino parties - going wild.”
She discusses some difficulty in communicating in Tagalog especially because of her parents, as immigrants from the Philippines, adjusted to their new life in the US. Growing up, she “couldn’t even understand my own language because what happened was that my parents taught my oldest sister only Tagalog and Ilocano, so when she went to school, she didn’t understand any English. So then for me and my other sister, we are only speaking English to them.”
Realizing from a young age of the disparities between beauty standards seen in Filipino media, she saw this even within her friend group at home. Even though her friends were all Filipino, she started to become aware of how others treated them because of how they looked versus how she and the rest of her friends were treated: “when it came to me and my friends who were darker, who didn’t have that Asian smooth skin and the cute glasses and the straight black hair and it caused us to try harder to be what everyone wanted us to be - until we got to the age where it was like “I don’t care” - I was one of the people who was very early on like I don’t care.”
She recalls her feelings about those observations when she was a child. “At first, I didn’t like that I wasn’t treated like them. It didn’t make sense to me because we’re all Filipino and we’re all in the same classes and we all hang out together and we’re all getting the same grades and we all have the same friends and yet, and me and my other friends are still being treated not as well as them.”
Circling back to pop culture today, Victoria states that “it wasn’t really until now or when we got to college when people actually sort of had Asian representation. When you look in malls and magazines and you see all these models - all these models are white and all of them are tall and skinny... there is just a big ambiguity with what people are… it’s a double edge sword where no matter what happens, no one is gonna be satisfied or somebody is gonna criticize something.”
PAULINE BAYOTAS
February 15, 2019
Pauline Bayotas is a freshman at Pitt studying Speech, Language, and Pathology. She is involved in FSA as an Events Committee member as well as the Social Media Intern. She is also a member of the Tinikling team.
Pauline was born in Bulacan province in the Philippines and was raised there until she was about 8 or 9 year old. She discusses her difficulty in language barriers when she first moved to America. Although she learned English in the Philippines, she recalls that “the English that we learned was formal and when I moved to Jersey City, I didn’t get the slang. They didn’t really make fun of me, but they’re not used to having a first or second grader talking in such a polite way.”
Moving towards a discussion about dating culture and how that related to her family and culture, she cites many examples from her younger brother’s experiences in dating. “My parents aren’t the most strictest parents and I’m very fortunate about that, and I think it’s how I view things. I’m very stubborn, and if we don’t agree on something, we don’t have to agree but I want them to respect me. When my brother dated a white girl, I told them well, we’re not in the Philippines so it’s not guaranteed that we’re going to end up with a Filipino when we’re surrounded by different cultures. And it took them a while because they’re not used to it but with a lot of persuasion and they’re very open and I’m thankful for that.”
In addition, she also provides the observation of how women are supposed to handle starting a family as well as pursuing a career in health care. “For example, if you’re becoming a doctor or a pharmacist, they’re always like “Isn’t that a long time? How are you going to get married and have a family?” And I’m like, I could do both. It’s not supposed to be family and love over ambition.”
She even observes inequalities for how race may factor into how her relatives and families may react to dating culture. “Of course, if I date a Filipino, they’re obviously be more accepting of it. If I date a white guy, they’ll be like oh maybe he makes more money. If I date someone Hispanic or black, they will be more skeptical of it because of the stereotypes imposed on it. They sometimes don’t get how that not everything is based on what the past was like. Instead of thinking of what society has placed, they should just try and get to know them.”
She also alludes to the double standard that exists in how men are treated versus women in dating culture. She points out a huge inequality between men and women in how they are viewed when they tell their families about their significant other “But when it came to girls, especially older people, they think that girls are more vulnerable and they’re like “Oh you’re dating someone? I need to meet him first, I need to make sure he’s okay.” They’re protective because they believe that girls don’t have the capability to make their own decisions. Basically, femininity equates to vulnerability.”
FRANCHESCA INAY
March 10, 2019
Franchesca “Fran” Inay is a freshman at Pitt on the Pre-Med track. She was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US when she was three years old. She is an Events Committee member and is the 2019-2020 FSA E-Board Culture Chair-Elect, a new position that aims to align FSA’s activities as culturally-relevant to Filipino culture. In addition, she has served on the Pitt Asian Student Alliance Advocacy Committee this school year.
Since immigrating to the US, she has lived in several different states, each with their own unique aspect and varying degrees of diversity. Living in Hawaii, then Colorado, and then New Jersey, she reflects upon how when she moved to Colorado from an environment of being surrounded by so many Asian people, “I was one of the only Asian people in my classes, so that’s when I really questioned about being Asian and how that ties into my identity.” When she moved to New Jersey, she was surrounded “by a lot of Filipino people and Asian people in general. So I can see the differences from living in New Jersey from Colorado and see both sides.”
She sees how gender stereotypes and gender roles can play a huge role in shaping Filipino culture. When comparing how members of her family can be treated differently from her, she knows that “my parents are coming from a place where they want to protect me, but at the same time... I think it’s just how gender stereotypes are so ingrained with our parents and grandparents. They’re not doing it because they want to restrain me, but at the same time, it’s frustrating.”
Foreseeing this issue in the future, Fran states how this can translate into her future relationships. While she knows that her family is very supportive of her future career in the medical field, she recalls how her family wants her to “get married to someone who has a high enough income to take care of me and in my head, it’s true but I don’t need someone to take care of me. It’s more subtle, but I can pick up on it.”
When discussing sensitive topics, she reflects how the generational gap can prevent her parents and grandparents from understanding cultural sensitivity and political correctness. She knows that “they aren’t doing it intentionally and I know that they don’t have negative views, but they’ve internalized the gender roles and stereotypes and think it’s okay to make certain jokes or comments.” When she tries to bring it up, however, “they sometimes get kind of defensive and think that I’m attacking their character, but that’s not the case but I’m just trying to make them understand why it’s wrong.”
She explains why these beliefs are sustained for so long in Filipino culture compared to US culture, “Filipino culture is rooted in tradition and respect towards your elders, so there’s difficulty in being progressive because you’re trying to make people older than you understand these beliefs and challenge what they grew up believing… in the United States, the culture allows for others to voice their opinion and challenge other beliefs because people aren’t as resistant.”
Reflecting upon her upbringing and history, Fran is certain that “if I grew up differently, like in the Philippines, I would think differently… it just goes to show how different our cultures are.”