Pass The Quilt

Riz Oades - Professor, Political Activist and Fulbright scholar.

For me, he was the first - professor of an Southeast Asian history class that mostly focused on Filipinos. When I searched his name on Yahoo, the first hit I got led to Rate My Professors. I glanced through some of it, and yeah, some of the comments were pretty accurate.

The class was 90 minutes of kickback, and I loved and hated the course and its professor. I loved it because, for one, 99% of my classmates were Filipino. There might’ve been one or 2 Vietnamese people. It made me feel at home again. I felt out of place in my other classes, a majority of the students were white. I also hated it because there were really no grades. My essays would come back with checkmarks or double or triple checkmarks. It almost seemed they were “graded” at random. The overachiever in me wanted to see letter grades, preferably A’s. 

Our required textbooks were a couple of bound collections of articles. Professor Oades was a columnist at the Asian Journal and Mabuhay Times (newspapers you could get at the local Filipino markets/restaurants in San Diego).

It was the only class I took on Asian American history, probably because it was the only one.

I still have the books at my parents’ house and will have to get them and re-read them when I have the chance.

Professor Oades was pretty laid back. He stood about 5’ tall and had a slight accent. He talked about his kids a lot, especially his youngest, who he referred to as “The Cook.” It was a loving jab at his youngest who took the culinary route rather than the scholarly one.

Profesesor Oades passed away from stomach cancer in October 2009. Although he died young (he was only 74), his legacy will live on through his students, readers of his columns and the Filipino community in San Diego (especially National City).