W&M FASA
Alumni Spotlight
You wanna know what FASA was like in years past? Get to know one of our veteran FASA members and learn about their time in William & Mary and FASA!
Paul Atienza
Class of 2015
Interviewed: September 21, 2022
Author's note: To preface this, I just want to note that I interview alumni not just to get to know them, but also to learn more about the history of WMFASA and the struggles past members had to overcome to get to where FASA is right now. The history of this organization carries so much significance to the visibility of Filipinos at William & Mary and we should honor those who paved the way for us.
This first interview is with Paul Atienza, who was FASA's president in 2015. Below is an edited version of our conversation back in September, which was about an hour and a half long. I'm glad I got to reminisce with Paul on his college memories as well as update him with FASA today. I also want to add that Paul was super excited to know that his work and the events that he initiated in FASA were successful. Thank you, Kuya, for talking to me and I hope those who read this value your words as much as I do!
​
- Kristi Viray '22-'23 Historian
If you don't mind, let's start with an introduction. When did you go to William & Mary and why did you join FASA?
​
​
I’m Paul Atienza. I was at William & Mary from 2011 to 2015. I found out about FASA during the club fair. I hadn’t seen anyone that looked like me at school yet, until that moment and I was like, I found home here. I remember seeing Ryann Tanap and Michael Magaling and I was like “Oh, are you guys Filipino?” and they were like “Yup! We are! Do you wanna join?” and I was like “Sure! I got nothing better to do!” Yeah, I met up with them and went to a couple events with them and got the ball rolling of sticking around with the club. I got really involved when I did culture night that year. And then, I ran for exec because of my big, Jacobi [Hines] for the culture night chair and then from there, went up the ranks, I would say, I was Vice President my junior year and I was the President my senior year.
Do you have a favorite memory or just one that comes to mind when you think of FASA?
My favorite memory would be culture night season in general. You never forget your first but, it's just a special event every year where people realize how big the club is. Because I remember as a freshman, there weren’t that many people at some events or I’ve only seen people in doses. It was crazy being in a room full of 50 Filipinos or 50 members of the club all coming together for one thing and it was to put on a fun show. That’s always been a fond memory.
​
Its always fun when you riff with your other castmates [...] and you kind of just own who you are.
Do you have a favorite event FASA does?
There are a lot of events that I liked but, one of them I did start is FASA Fun Week. That is something I brought my last year and was like “We gotta get these youngins involved early on. The idea of it was just to have these micro engagements get people to know each other in other contexts and cap it off with going to Jollibee. I don't know if you guys still do this. We would get a bunch of people in different cars and then go to Jollibee! It started off when I was President that year, I think it was for exec retreat and then the next day I suggested we go to Jollibee and go to the beach. And this is when Jollibee first opened up.
For D7, olympics is always cool to see. [It's like seeing] parallel universes to W&M. We weren’t really involved with D7 up until my senior year when the team and I made an effort to get us out there more. Senior year, we brought 30 people, we brought an army that year.”
​
​
​
We won?! I feel like an immigrant parent watching the later generations enjoy the stuff that I tried to push.
​
That’s the joy, I think, of FASA. It was always fun trying to figure stuff out every year.
After I left, Tuan [Vu] started LAKAS and I remember him telling me, “it’s crazy bro. Getting together this whole event. I got a guy coming in from Maryland, Gem [Daus]” and he brought in a lot of speakers it was like a whole conference with coffee and donuts, it was crazy.
​
It's really cool to see, from an alumni perspective, the [events] you guys pull off. Stuff we couldn’t even imagine, I remember for culture night, getting a Saturday time slot was the craziest thing.
Did you know we won D7 Olympics last year?
Yeah, We've never won before so, we're just trying to figure out how to host the event.
Now, we're gonna go on a trip down memory lane and look through one of the FASA scrapbooks.
Jeremy [Rellosa] (middle in bottom picture), he was my little, I tricked him into doing culture night. I told him, “Yeah Jeremy, I got a small role for you" and then he ended up doing the whole thing! He has the biggest role and the most lines!
Historically, I would say that FASA is one of the more diverse culture clubs, in that we always had a lot of non-Filipinos/Filipino-Americans. We would always convince our friends to join FASA and we get them to really want to hang around us through culture night.
That's usually how that goes still! What was the audition process like?
We didn’t have auditions! We didn’t have the numbers!
There weren’t any formal auditions, it was based on who we know and connections of connections
This is when we started a youtube channel. Something I wanted to keep carrying on from the previous generations before me was filming. There was an alum, Ben Del Mundo, he used to make a film series with all the members of FASA throughout the years based on the TV show “Heroes” called “FASA Heroes” where everyone had a superpower. And he did that for years - at least 5 years. Ben was our film guy and once he left, we needed at least one person who could handle a camera. We would rent cameras from Swem and I would write out scripts with Weldon and Michael about random stuff. I made one about Pusoy Dos, one about how to make lumpia- they’re pretty bad looking at it now but, it was fun!
​
I guess the art of filmmaking never really got passed down besides doing - something I think Ben did almost every year - the exec video. At welcome dinner, there was a video playing and we did one every year with a different theme. One year, the one I edited, where we all get out of the same car.
I remembered why we did those videos now. Something I was frustrated about when I was a sophomore, when we had the Gen meetings it was always the same. We were always like, these are the events we have going to have and that’s it. Nothing related to Filipino culture and so I got pretty mad about that. I started doing stuff to get people thinking about things we’ve experienced with our family. I started playing pusoy dos, the game all of our uncles play, back in the day, in the basement. I taught people how to play that. I got people to learn how to make stuff so we can pass it down to other years as opposed to having to teach people every year. Anastasia [Rivera] as culture chair, something she started was, every Gen meeting she had a whole presentation on something related to Filipino culture for every month. One year, for the GBM for Halloween, it was on Filipino horror stories or Filipino myths. That was cool. Because there wasn’t any other way for us to learn any of this stuff from class or anything so we decided to do it ourselves. We had one guy come in to teach us Tagalog one time. We started getting really creative with having themes with different general body meetings. [FASA] is a social club but, we’re giving people a reminder besides we come together to hang out, that of the culture that runs through all of us to some extent.
​
The presidents, historically, have been someone who was a science major and they would just always be focused on checking the boxes of what we were doing and not really doing [much to evolve the organization].
Now that we're wrapping up this interview I wanted to ask what did you think of the future of FASA back then? What did you wish for FASA back then? Have we achieved it?
Oh! You guys blew it out of the water from the stuff I’ve seen. From when I visited you guys last year, having stuff like that (Isang Kuwento), we weren’t doing stuff like that. You guys have lot of talent. We would only find out that people were talented at culture night.
Also in terms of size too. We’ve always been pretty small and I wanted to see the group grow a lot and for us to always stay relevant and you guys are killing it! Everywhere! Especially on social media.
Lastly, do you have any advice for new/current members?
It's the same every year. [...] I think something that was really cool about FASA, especially around that culture night season, is just getting everyone involved no matter if you were just a friend that was pulled onto a dance or you were the lead cast member, everyone got involved somehow. Everyone got excited about what they were doing, no matter how big or small their role was. And its always cool to see people who just got a taste of FASA just from that small role and then hanging out on a regular weekend playing “Settlers of Catan”
Stay involved. Get everyone feeling like they’re apart of the team and it’s always fun when there is more people. Never a dull moment.