Project Background

At the end of last year, Theresa approached us and asked us to participate in the Southeast Asian Pluralism Project through leading a student difficult dialogue for the upcoming Autumn Quarter. PADD threw around some ideas and Tagalog became the issue we wanted to tackle especially since the majority of our members are currently and in the recent past taking this course. Right now five of our members are in the first year, the two students in the intermediate are members, and two out of the three enrolled in advanced are also in PADD. With this, we knew that taking this language was important to us and conveying this significance through photography was a task we could collectively do.

Doing some background research we uncovered that Tagalog was offered here in the 1970s and 1980s and then there was a big push for it in 2000, which was spearheaded by the Filipino American Student Association (FASA), and Professor Bonus and his students in the Filipino American History and Culture course. And with a little bit more digging we found out that the presence of Filipino students at the university dates back to at least 1916 with the presence of an established student organization, The Filipino Club. Like that of the Smithsonian Centennial Event commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the arrival of the Sakadas to Hawaii celebration across the street, we Filipinos and Filipino Americans at the University of Washington have a long standing history on this campus and that is something we also need to celebrate.

But, it is now 2006 and the Tagalog program on this campus is yet to be institutionalized. We began to look at the larger picture beyond that of the program, the history of Filipinos no just at UW but in the entire United States, discussions on marginalization, invisibility, memory, culture, identity, politics, our relationship to institutions, transnationalism, and even the complexities and the hierarchic nature of language…talk about a difficult dialogue =)

The current situation of the Tagalog program at UW is that it is offered in the American Ethnic Studies Department, courses are offered in beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. The university has committed to permanently fund the first year of Tagalog and the Southeast Asian Center has been able to raise the Dean and the College’s commitment to 50% of the funding for 3 years of Tagalog instruction at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels, the other 50% is covered under the 4 year grant cycle of the Southeast Asian Center. This funding is secured until 2010 and at that point the Southeast Asian Center plans to ask the College to raise their commitment to 100% of all 3 levels of Tagalog instruction.

This project has only begun to scratch the surface of this issue and PADD hopes that this goes beyond today’s event. We want to create awareness especially because this struggle is still on going. Create awareness within our community and especially amongst our peers, that this issue has a long history and is still in need of support.