Filipino Student Association gives students a home away from home
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Before Bettina Talento arrived in the United States to begin her freshman year at Syracuse University, she was already part of a subcommunity on campus. After her acceptance to SU, the Filipino Student Association (FSA) reached out and invited her to become a member.
“We got to meet up in New York City, that was the first time I ever stepped foot into America,” Talento said about joining the club. “But since they were showing me around, it felt so much better and it didn’t really feel so much of a foreign place to me anymore.”
Now, three years later, Talento is president of FSA, which is nearing its sixth anniversary as an on-campus Filipino and East Asian organization. The club is open to all students, celebrating the Filipino culture of hospitality and accommodation. Throughout the month, FSA has been celebrating Filipino-American Heritage Month through a series of events, including a bake sale fundraiser on Friday, Oct. 20.
In October 1587, the first Filipino people arrived in the continental U.S., commemorating October as the Filipino-American Heritage Month. This tradition began in 1992 when the Filipino American National Historical Society passed a proclamation to establish the month.
FSA is very proactive in outreach to new students. Many of the current executive board members were contacted by previous FSA members. Both Talento and senior Joane Chavez noted that they had connected with the organization via Instagram DM after being admitted to Syracuse.
“When I came to Syracuse it was fall of 2020, very much a COVID year.” Chavez said, “Finding a Filipino community on campus was really important to me.”
FSA tackles homesickness by reflecting the values of Filipino culture and helping Southeast Asian students feel at home in a new community.
“We are a pretty close knit kind of group of people,” said Rosemary McNulty, secretary of the FSA. “If you’re Filipino, and you meet other Filipinos, like it’s just a very welcoming community, that’s really hard to replicate.”
FSA’s “Ate Kuya” program is one of their most important. Kuya means “older sister” and “older brother” in Filipino, and similar to “bigs” and “littles” in other organizations, this ongoing event is a mentor program for members.
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Talento said this event has and will continue to build lifelong friendships and connections between FSA members.
“To be fully honest with you, like, finding the Filipino Student Association here was the only reason why I didn’t transfer out of Syracuse my freshman year,” Chavez said. “Having them made me feel so much less alone.”
These lifelong bonds are reflective of a family forming between the members, Talento said. They call these connections “family trees” within the university. Although the club is young on campus, it has high aspirations.
“A lot of our Filipino members bring in guests who aren’t of Filipino heritage… One of the biggest things of Filipino culture is they’re very welcoming, they’re very hospitable. That was one of the biggest things if you go to the Philippines,” Talento said.
Throughout the rest of October, FSA is hosting multiple events to commemorate the month. To end the celebrations, FSA is hosting “Halohaloween” on Oct. 27, and having their “Ate Kuya” revealed at the event.
“(FSA) was a way for us to get to know each other. It was a way to interact with new people.” Chavez said “Some of my favorite memories, someone would pull out a guitar, they just sing, they cook and everything and it was very much just like a home,” Chavez said.
