Student Union
Campus Ministries Soothe, Rally Students Shaken Over Ukraine
Entering Yale University's St. Thomas More Catholic Chapel, Oksana Goroshchuk spotted sunflowers adorning a candlelit altar and thought of the fields full of her country's national blossom near her grandmother's home in Ukraine.
A mezzo-soprano launched into a traditional folk tune that Goroshchuk used to sing growing up, and the postdoctoral medical researcher broke down in tears of grief — and gratitude for the university community's solidarity with her homeland.
"It's people who support us and people who love us," said Goroshchuk, 32, who was born in Kyiv and whose parents recently escaped the war-torn country.
Across the United States, campus ministries of different denominations are working to bring comfort to college students who, after two years of pandemic disruption and isolation, have been plunged deeper into feelings of crisis and helplessness by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
From Ivy League schools to public institutions to Catholic universities, they're holding prayer vigils, organizing medical supply drives and staging emotional performances of sacred music. Chaplains say religious and nonreligious students alike, especially those with loved ones in war zones, urgently need a sense of community to help them cope.
"One of the best things we do in campus ministry is we foster community," said Lisa Reiter, director of campus ministry at Loyola University Chicago.
At the Wednesday night peace concert and benefit at Yale, dozens of attendees gazed quietly at an image of a crucified Jesus Christ holding a dove, backlit by the blue and yellow of Ukraine's flag. Cello suites, organ pieces, classical violin and piano melodies and a Ukrainian Orthodox chant echoed through the chapel.
"There's this mass movement by Russia to take away lives of Ukrainians. But they can't take away the culture, and they can't take away the language or the song," said Sofiya Bidochko, a 19-year-old Yale student from Lviv, Ukraine. "I feel the importance of preserving my Ukrainian-ness when I hear these songs."
To the north at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the campus' Hillel organization recently welcomed several Ukrainian students to a Shabbat dinner, where they supped on matzo ball soup and deli sandwiches. The Jewish group's members listened to their guests talk about their homes and families and promised to support them.
"It was just nice to have this bit of community," said Yevheniia, a 20-year-old student who came to the dinner even though she was baptized Orthodox Christian and considers herself agnostic.
She asked that her last name be withheld to protect her parents — they live in an area in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists and recently messaged her to say they were going to a bomb shelter.
Also this month, at the University of Rhode Island, an interfaith peace vigil drew people from Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other faiths together in prayer. A Buddhist chaplain struck a Tibetan singing bowl to mark a moment of silence for those suffering and killed in Ukraine.
Organizers stressed the importance of not only making divine appeals but carrying out concrete, earthly action, and provided resources for students to do so.
"Prayer alone is not enough," said Amy Olson, chair of the university's Chaplains Association and executive director of its Hillel group. "We really put an emphasis on ways that people could either make charitable donations or contribute funds to help the cause, how they could write to their politicians or offer support to the Ukrainian community locally."
A similar solidarity vigil was held at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. And at Loyola University Chicago, the campus ministry partnered with the newly recreated Ukrainian student club to stage a drive that collected 60 tons of medical supplies for war relief.
Campus ministers at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota, have been collecting money for humanitarian aid at religious services and say some $700 was put in collection baskets at Ash Wednesday Masses alone. A kiosk has also been set up with a scannable QR code for online donations.
The school is home to many Somali American students who attended a recent prayer for peace. As the children of refugees or refugees themselves, they have seen firsthand the horrors of war and "get shaken by" seeing them repeated in Ukraine, Muslim chaplain Sadaf Shier said.
Many chaplains said that remote education and a lack of socializing and shared rituals during the pandemic have frayed the social fabric that would normally help assuage the struggles and anxiety of students, some of whom worry the hostilities in Ukraine could spill beyond borders and ignite a World War III.
That means their mission has changed, becoming less focused on just worship and more on helping young adults re-engage with each other and the world. Often that entails channeling their concern into charitable action.
"Students have been trying to figure out what to do," said Sister Jenn Schaaf, assistant Catholic chaplain at Yale.
The mezzo-soprano whose performance at Yale moved Goroshchuk to tears was Karolina Wojteczko, a native of Poland who recently graduated from the university and now serves as music director at St. Thomas More.
Wojteczko was inspired to organize the concert by the distress she has noticed among both Eastern European and American friends. That included Russians, who she said are being "shunned from the communities right now." One student with family in both Ukraine and Russia confessed to feeling utterly lost.
The concert has helped people unite, cope and heal.
"After COVID everyone has been so separated," Wojteczko said, "and this is ... a way to just sit there and be, and participate, and feel that you are connected to people who need help in the world."
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The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
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"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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