Student Union
- By Parth Vohra
Do You Struggle As a First Gen Student?
Dark hair and eyes. Living at home instead of in a dorm. Speaking a foreign language. Changing into shorts on the school bus.
And grape leaves instead of PB&J.
Those are just some of the issues first-generation Americans say they navigate with one foot in the culture of their parents, and the other in the youth culture of America.
Living dual cultures does not come easily, say four first-generation college students VOA StudentU interviewed last week. While they identify with being young and American, they say they are happy their parents encouraged them to carry on their native cultures, too.
“My mom insisted that I bring authentic Lebanese food to lunch everyday,” Layla Najjar, 21, recalls vividly. “She insisted that I speak to her in Arabic.She just really insisted that I embrace this part of my identity, and initially as a young child, I really wanted nothing more than just to fit in” in America.
Each one grappled with balancing their past with their present. Now adults, they say the silver-lining of those challenges was being not just American, but international Americans.
First-generation Americans are born to foreign parents in the United States or born abroad and immigrated as young children.
Najjar, an international politics senior at Georgetown University, was born to Lebanese parents in Great Falls, Virginia. Fluent in English and Arabic, she calls herself a “unique hybrid” and identifies as American and Lebanese. But as a child, she felt conflicted about that identity.
She didn’t feel different at her small private elementary school in Rockville, Maryland, only because she wasn’t blond and blue-eyed like most of the other kids, she said. It was things like the lunch she brought from home. An elementary teacher once frowned at Najjar as she pulled out grape leaves for a meal, instead of sandwiches, she said.
Around high school, Najjar realized the blessing of being dual-cultured.
“My family, and specially my mother, has never shied away from our heritage, or our identity,” Najjar says.
Najjar danced traditional Lebanese folk dance as she grew up. Friends and family often get together around a table to eat mulukhiyah, an Afro-Middle East dish of coriander, garlic, chicken and rice.
“I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not one, and I’m not the other,” she says. “And I’m not neither.I’m both.”
Sarah Tayel,19, a junior at the University of Maryland says she is proud of her Egyptian background, and “flaunts” being Muslim and Arab. During ice-breaking sessions in elementary school, Tayel always spoke plainly about her roots, “I’m Egyptian.I speak Arabic.I’m Muslim.”
Tayel was born in New York. Tayel’s parents emigrated from Alexandria, Egypt, and her family also includes two younger sisters and a brother.
Tayel is fluent in Arabic, and credits her mother for that. When she visits Egypt with her family, locals think she was born and raised there, Tayel says.
“I’m just as caught up as any other native Egyptian on, like, the music, the entertainment, the movies ...and I can say the same for my siblings, as well.They are pretty up to date on everything.”
But there were moments of cultural frustration, she says.
Tayel wasn’t allowed to attend the parties or prom that most other American students enjoyed. She said she never had a dying desire to attend these events, and used the time to focus on her studies.
“I've seen friends spend their high school years partying, drinking, and engaging in harmful activities that hindered them, and prevented them from getting into college,” Tayel says, “let alone good colleges.”
But going out of state for college was never an option, Tayel's parents require her to live at home, not in the dorms.
“That’s an instance of, like, frustration,” Tayel says.“Even till now, it's still frustrating to me.I appreciate it, I love being home ... but it can be frustrating sometimes.”
Minah Malik, 21, also has felt the strain of some cultural baggage.
Malik grew up amid her parents, younger sister, maternal aunt and four cousins, who were all Pakistani in West Windsor Township, New Jersey. She was always connected to Pakistani culture, Malik said.
“I was 100 percent that girl that was on the school bus, like, taking off her leggings and changing into short-shorts because her mom didn't want her to wear certain clothes,” Malik says.“That’s what everybody wore, so that’s what I wanted to wear.”
Upon finding them when Malik was in 7th grade, she says, her mother cut up her only two pairs of short-shorts.
Relationships or an interest in the opposite sex is not a topic comfortably discussed with parents, Malik explains.The marriage ceiling is 25 for Pakistani women, and now that she is 21, she grapples with their suggestions about marriage prospects.
“Once I finally asserted myself, and I was like, ‘No, you brought me up in the United States.If you wanted me to be this Pakistani child ... then you should have brought me up there ... Once they accepted it, it was easier for them to move on from it, but it took them a while to get there.”
Malik co-presides the Pakistani Student Association at George Washington University, where she is an aspiring pre-law student. She says she joined the PSA as Pakistani culture is “integral” to her.
Aylin Uyar, 21, an electrical engineering senior also at George Washington University, has embraced both her Turkish and American cultures.
Born to Turkish parents in Sea Bright, New Jersey, Uyar says her family only speaks Turkish at home. When she was five she translated notes between her parents and her teachers.
“Within my family we are only allowed to speak Turkish,” says Uyar. “Like, if you told me to speak English with my parents, I would not be able to.”
Uyar watched Turkish soap operas with her mother to improve her Turkish. Meanwhile, when they went out, they would ask Uyar to translate English. It was annoying at times, Uyar says. But, looking back, she says she feels blessed to be bilingual and have a multicultural background.It brings dimension to one’s personality, she says.
“I’m really, really grateful to my parents who put in all that effort.” Uyar says. “They could have just raised me as an American, but they wanted to keep that culture, they wanted to keep that part of our family active, they didn’t want to just end it there.”
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Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
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.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"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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