Sulong UBC and UBC Kababayan are using swag for good.
In support of their Food is for Everyone campaign, which seeks to reinstate UBC staff access to the AMS Food Bank, the university’s two foremost Filipino student groups organized a Swagapino contest outside the Nest on Feb. 24. The event saw students of various swag levels and Filipino-ness compete in a set of challenges to determine once and for all the question we’re all asking: Who, when all is said and done, is the swaggiest Swagapino?
Kababayan VP Academic Cassdel Rosario said that Swagapino “is a mindset.” The term emerged in online spaces to describe the resurgence of 2010s hip-hop-inspired style among young Filipinos — think baggy jeans and hoodies, basketball jerseys, snapbacks and chains.
Kababayan and Sulong were inspired by other contest events that have been drawing crowds on campus throughout the year, like the performative male contest, the aura farming contest and the Heated Rivalry look-alike contest. Sulong Chairperson Noreen Valenzuela said they also noticed that “online, the Filipino community [had] become very popular, trendy … [a contest] just seemed fitting.”
But what sets the Swagapino contest apart is that Kababayan and Sulong aren’t just out to give students a fun time — they’re also raising money to buy groceries for UBC staff members. In 2023, the AMS announced that it would no longer allow UBC staff to use the AMS Food Bank, citing rising costs and insufficient funds. That summer, Sulong began advocating for the AMS to reinstate this access. In 2024, they gathered the required 500 signatures on a petition for the student union to hold a special general meeting (SGM) to vote on the subject. That meeting failed to meet quorum, and staff access remained restricted.
“That was a pretty demoralizing loss for Sulong,” said Valenzuela. After a community meeting in the Nest days after the SGM failed to meet quorum, Valenzuela said there was a “period of stagnation” in the Food is for Everyone campaign as Sulong regrouped and a new executive team took the reins. This September and December, Sulong held free “appreciation lunches” for staff members, where they reconnected with the community and began rekindling the cause, this time with Kababayan and UBC Sprouts — the volunteer-run café and food-security group — lending helping hands.
Entry as a contestant into the Swagapino contest was by donation, and Rosario said spectators pitched in donations and bought merchandise as well. Sulong and Kababayan plan to use the money to buy groceries for their weekly food distribution efforts that seek to alleviate some of the food insecurity brought on by the restriction of the AMS Food Bank. For these distributions, Sulong and Kababayan members hand out free groceries at the staff pickup site in the Life Building. They hope that this effort can “promote empowerment for the workers,” Valenzuela said.
The contest itself was a familiar sight to anyone who’s followed events like it throughout the year, though this one drew a more intimate crowd of a few dozen as opposed to the performative man contest’s over 100. Contestants, dripped out in two-sizes-too-big jeans and hoodies, some sporting Filipino flags and one wearing an Andrés Bonifacio T-shirt, competed in three rounds — swag walking, a freestyle dance battle and a talent show — before the four finalists, chosen by show of applause, faced off in a final freestyle dance head-to-head.
Rosario said she and her fellow organizers were “playing it by ear.” The final freestyle, for instance, was a last-minute addition by Valenzuela when they realized that the final four were tied up in terms of applause.
Highlights of the contest included a karaoke rendition of Childish Gambino’s “3005,” a genuinely impressive freestyle hip-hop dance from a former Kababayan member and what one contestant called their “longest putangina” — basically they held the word for “son-of-a-bitch” in Tagalog for kind of a long time.
In the end, it turned out that, as the winning contestant put it, being Filipino is about what’s on the inside, not petty technicalities like ethnicity or country of origin. The victor of the Swagapino contest was none other than Nayis Majumder, organizer of the performative man contest and the Heated Rivalry look-alike contest, who is — and this is true — not Filipino. That said, their swag was strong, and they were able to “spit Tagalog without blinking or twitching,” said Rosario. “I was like, ‘Oh, I can’t even do that sometimes’,” she laughed.
Rosario and Valenzuela were happy with the contest’s turnout, and with the money they managed to raise. In addition to continuing their weekly food distribution efforts, Kababayan and Sulong are planning to collaborate on a Baybayin workshop where students can learn to write in the traditional alphabet of the Philippines. They also hope to host another appreciation lunch for UBC staff like the one they hosted in September.
