Student Union
Violence, Racism in US Worry Foreign Students
Around the corner from where Anna Shchetinina lives in Minneapolis, the post office is gone, shops have been boarded up, and the police station has gone up in flames.
That’s the same police station the officers, who arrested and restrained George Floyd on a busy street before he died, worked from. Since then, protests and looting have erupted nationwide against racism -- Floyd was African American -- and police brutality in the U.S.
“These past few days demonstrated how physically vulnerable I am,” said Shchetinina, 29, an international student from Russia at the University of Minnesota. “Living in the center of the protest in Minneapolis put me in constant fear.”
Grocery stores, local restaurants, a couple of nonprofits, affordable housing sites affordable, bus stops, rose bushes and hydrangeas, are all gone, she said.
“Watching an apartment building next door burning with people trapped on the roof is scary. Smoke getting into your lungs making it impossible to breathe or see is terrifying.”
But Shchetinina says she harbors no anger toward whoever caused the damage and make her scurry from her house every night in a hurry.
“This wave is as much scary and damaging, as it is powerful and justified,” she said.
“I saw business owners saying: ‘Let my building burn if it’s for this cause.’ I saw people peacefully helping each other at the support centers. I saw as many people volunteering during daytime, as rioting at night, and most likely these two groups overlap.”
“I guess the only thing I haven’t seen these days is indifference. While Minneapolis is licking its wounds, the scars will remain as a sign of urgency of change,” she said.
Many young people are expressing sorrow and anger, compassion and anxiety over Floyd’s death, which instigated protests and rioting across the U.S.
“I worked very hard for years to learn English and earn all the qualifications to become a student here,” said Armenian native Ani Martikyan, 19. “I think that was one of the best decisions and achievements I've had in my life.”
But the unrest over racial discrimination unsettles her.
“I love the U.S. and what it offers me, but I am very disappointed by how my idea of it turned from a land that welcomes absolutely everyone to a place where people can get killed because of the color of their skin,” said Martikyan, a rising sophomore at Stetson University in Central Florida.
Like other international students in the U.S., Martikyan is stunned by the events leading to Floyd’s death. Although she knows many people from her country want to move here, she said “modern racism scares them.”
Martikyan said her mom in Yerevan is “worried” about her amid the upheaval. Armenia saw police brutality in 2015 when people protested hikes in electricity fees, and in 2018, during the Velvet Revolution against the government led by Nikol Pashinyan, who became the prime minister. But not since, she said.
“My mom is definitely very worried about me,” she said.
“Every time I see a video of a usual arrest in the U.S., [it] always seems unnecessarily violent and scary to me.”
Protests that began in Minneapolis -- where Floyd died May 25 after he was arrested and restrained on a busy street as bystanders video recorded the incident -- have spread to New York City, Dallas, and dozens of other U.S. cities. In Washington, protesters have clashed with law enforcement outside the gates of the White House.
“Me, personally, I believe every protest, every riot, tweet, post, hashtag, etc. is necessary,” said Raequan Johnson, an American computer-science student at the College of Southern Maryland.
“Everything is necessary for the change of this country. Everything in stores can be replaced but lives can’t be,” Raequan said. “These riots and protests are beneficial to get our point across. This probably isn’t going to end racial profiling but I’m confident that it will lessen it.”
Myanmar native Saw, 19, who used only one name because she said she fears her visa being revoked if she comments on the record, said recent events have “changed my mind about the police and how they are supposed to behave.”
Saw said that before choosing to pursue a biology degree in the U.S., she considered gun violence, but it had always been “her [dream] to study abroad [...] in the U.S.”
Family and friends from Myanmar were “shocked” seeing the police brutality in the U.S. last week, she said.
Jacob Mwanza, 36, an international student and graduate assistant at the University of Nevada-Reno from Zambia, said he has not personally felt racism.
But the Floyd video “brings a lot of untold fear in me because I am slowly realizing that these things are happening, and anyone can be a subject of racism,” Mwanza said.
“I am traumatized, really, my movements are restricted now, and I watch my back more than I used to. It is an experience that will live with me for a long time and will definitely influence my interactions/perceptions of life in the diaspora for an African child,” he said.
Some students, like Markus Tarjamo, 26, said racism and police brutality in the U.S. will require a “multigenerational effort” to make progress.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” the College of Southern Maryland student said. “This is not going to be something that can be solved within just 2020, 2021. This is going to be a … multiyear, and really I mean, multigenerational effort that we’re going to have to go and make to fix a lot of the problems in America.”
Ariel Hall, Ruby Rosenthal and Sarmat Misikov contributed to this report.
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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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