Densho Digital Repository - Sharon Maeda Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-529-15)

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BY: Can you talk a little bit about your time at the Ethnic Cultural Center at UW? I know that's kind of circling back to grad school days and all of that, but talk a little bit about that.

SM: Okay, that was '71 to... well, '70, I went back to grad school. '71 to '73 I was a student activities advisor; I was the only person of color in the activities office. I got the Black Student Union, the Asian Student Coalition, American Indian Student Association, et cetera, MEChA, International Students, et cetera. So I got all students of color basically, all their student organizations, Hawaii Club, all of that. And I loved working with the diverse students. So then when there was an opening for director of the Ethnic Cultural Center on campus, I was recruited to apply for that job, and I did that from 1973 through '75. And that was a really amazing time on campus because the activism was full blown by then. The student groups were very active, and the Cultural Center had a study center where they could get tutorial help. It had a small theater where they could do performances and things. And then the center itself had offices and community space and kitchenettes, cook their ethnic food and do their own activities separate and apart from the student organizations that were housed at the HUB on upper campus.

BY: And it sounds like, there again, that your role was a supporter, mentor, coach kind of role.

SM: Right.

BY: Rather than being the leader of all these things?

SM: Right, exactly. And a lot of student leaders came out of that, because since I had been in student government and everything, I knew where the student body money was buried, you know, millions of dollars even back then. And nobody ever told them that they could bring speakers to town or those kind of things, and I knew exactly where that money was. So when they wanted to bring somebody to campus, I helped them apply for the speakers bureau and all of that.

BY: And it sounds like, throughout your career, you've been able to leverage that knowledge, that sort of insider knowledge of how systems worked to write grants. So tell a little bit about that.

SM: Well, you know, there was a period when progressive activists were, like, "Are you with us or are you not? Are you inside the system or are you part of us?" And I always felt like, hey, we got to have people on the inside. Sometimes I was on the inside, sometimes I was on the outside, but whatever I learned on the inside, I always wanted to share. And that's where a lot of that came from, because if you don't know that that money is available, or you don't know how the system works, then you can't really do the best of helping to change it if you don't really know what you're changing. So I always felt that that was important to pass that on.