Students Share Stories of Heartbreak in New Blog

University Mourns Loss of One of Its Own

Students, faculty and staff at the City University of New York are actively monitoring the hostile conflict that has engulfed Ukraine and taking advantage of opportunities to assist those impacted. For more than a month since the country was invaded by Russian forces, students with personal connections to the country have feared for the safety of loved ones. CUNY counts 749 students who report themselves to be of Ukrainian ancestry, and 25 who list a home address there.

While those students have coped with complicated feelings of anxiety and grief, CUNY colleges are working to connect them with counseling, emergency financial grants and other supportive services. Campuses are also conducting forums to educate the community and public about the ongoing crisis and its broader implications. One recent CUNY graduate traveled to the Poland-Ukraine border to hand-deliver aid. And CUNY has grappled with the loss of a graduate student and accomplished journalist who lost his life while reporting from Ukraine earlier this month.

"CUNY stands with the people of Ukraine against the horrific Russian siege of their country, and we are inspired by their unwavering courage," said Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez. "In a city that is home to the nation's largest Ukrainian community, we know there are students, faculty and staff who are personally touched by this crisis; our thoughts and prayers are with them. CUNY is truly heartened by the great strength they have shown, and committed to doing all that we can to help ease the burden caused by this horrific situation."

Accommodating the Displaced

Hunter College will host online information sessions on March 31 and April 7 at 10 a.m. for students who have been impacted by global conflicts. The sessions will focus on academic offerings, student life, the admission processes, financial aid packages - including scholarships and dorm rooms - as well as subsidized application fees for eligible students. Kingsborough Community College is streamlining the process to deliver funds to students who may need emergency grants as a result of having to financially support their families in the crisis. Brooklyn College offered completion and continuation grants for those in financial distress as a result of the war.

Students Do Best to Cope

Colleges across the CUNY system have encouraged students of Ukrainian heritage and other members of their campus communities to take advantage of counseling and other supportive services. Kingsborough Community College has reached out weekly to remind students that there are counselors on campus who speak Russian and Ukrainian.

CUNY students with ties to Ukraine shared their feelings on CUNYverse, the University's recently launched online hub for student generated content. In the piece, Baruch student Yuliia Pylypenko, who immigrated from Mykolaiv, Ukraine, interviewed several students on their experiences.

"There are hundreds of students of Ukrainian ancestry at CUNY who are struggling to do everyday tasks like working and studying," said Pylypenko. "As they live in constant fear of losing their loved ones to this devastating war, it was important that I was able to connect with some of them and share their feelings and experiences."

Maryana, a City College student who was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the United States as a child, described her feelings of sadness and grief. "I feel so guilty for being safe," she said. "I understand that none of this is my fault and none of this has anything to do with me, but I feel guilty that I am here safe and those people aren't."

Others lamented the large-scale destruction of Ukraine and noted the increased reliance on social media for news updates from the ground.

"I think one of the really important things is if you look at Kharkiv, which is one of the cities in Ukraine - it is bombed to the ground," said Julia Grossman, a criminology major at John Jay College whose parents emigrated from Ukraine. "The city that was once so beautiful and so full of life is not a city anymore. And if you imagine that happening to your home, and you imagine that happening to America for example, it would concern you and it would break you."

Incoming Brooklyn College student Iva Verba, who moved to New York last May. Her boyfriend and family remain in Ukraine.

"You know, it's very scary when the first message, when you open an app … is, 'Hi. There are explosions. I hope to see you again. I love you,'" she said. "I was just really shocked. I was in shock. Someday, I'll see it, and I'll feel those experiences. I hope that nobody will feel what I felt at this moment. This was really scary."

Andrew Berezhansky, the student government president at John Jay College, offers a pragmatic word to students who may be struggling to do everyday tasks as they live in fear of losing their loved ones who are imperiled.

"Breathe. Continue to move forward," said Berezhansky, whose great-grandparents came to the U.S. from Ukraine. "Think about how we can organize and be productive and speak to the issues that really matter."

Marshaling Support

One CUNY alumna took matters into her own hands. Khrystyna Melnyk, who graduated from Baruch College in 2017, has personally crossed the border of Ukraine and Poland and hand-delivered suitcases full of supplies. She has publicly documented her relief efforts with refugees on Facebook and TikTok. She went from delivering seven suitcases of aid to 35.

"Friends, family, strangers on the internet. I have absolutely no words for my gratefulness," she wrote on Facebook. In the span of four weeks, she said, she sent over 1,000 first-aid kits, bandages and gauze, over-the-counter medication, sleeping bags, clothing and other essentials.

But her work has just begun. She continues to gather public donations through accounts on Venmo and Zelle. In her most recent post, Melnyk wrote fearfully of the threat that the beleaguered Russian forces will resort to the use of chemical weapons. "Gas masks are desperately needed!" Melnyk wrote. "If anyone has respirators they can donate, please let me know."

Melnyk is no stranger to Ukraine: she was born there, immigrating to the United States with her family in 1998. "I still have very close family there and many friends," she told Baruch's Weissman School of Arts and Sciences. "My 83-year-old grandma is there as well as many, many uncles, aunts, cousins and so on."

On another campus, Brooklyn College, student group Tanger Hillel mobilized students across CUNY to support residents of the war-torn nation. They brought together 30 volunteers to package 3,750 pounds of medical supplies to send to Ukraine and Poland for incoming refugees.

Dialogue on Campuses

At Brooklyn College, which included nearly 300 students last semester who were born in Russia or Ukraine and many alumni, staff and faculty with connections to those countries or others in the region, the impact of the conflict has been palpable.

"The situation in Ukraine is one of unfathomable tragedy. Fighting needs to stop," tweetedEugene Shenderov, a 2005 Brooklyn College graduate, Ukraine native and oncologist who is a survivor of Chernobyl, responding to Russia's takeover of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. "Sanity needs to prevail. Insanity to see explosions on the largest nuclear plant in Europe!"

The college's political science department organized an "ad hoc teach-in" for students and faculty to share their thoughts and experiences.

"It was a terrible reason to have an amazingly rich conversation," said Janet Elise Johnson, a professor in the department.

Brooklyn College also gathered faculty experts on March 21 for a panel about the war, which Johnson co-moderated with history professor Brigid O'Keeffe. The panelists included film and media arts professor Irina Patkanian, English professor Moustafa Bayoumi, political science professor Mojúbàolú Olufúnké Okome, philosophy professor Anna Gotlib and Immigrant Student Success Office Director Jesús Perez.

Similar events were held at Macaulay Honors College, which hosted a virtual discussion about Ukraine moderated by Interim Dean Vanessa K. Valdés and other leaders.

Hunter College's Roosevelt House led an open discussion for faculty and students with policy experts and policy makers, including Manuel Castro, NYC commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, who shared his plan for his agency to expedite requests from Ukrainian refugees for temporary visas. Roosevelt House held a separate event with political geographers regarding the war. Hunter also hosted a film screening of "Fiddler, A Miracles of Miracles," to raise funds to benefit programs for food, shelter and medical needs for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

At Queens College, political science professor Keena Lipsitz moderated a panel of faculty experts that included Elissa Bemporad (history), Julie George (political science), Igor Kuskovsky (physics), Peter Liberman (political science), and Thomas Ort (history).The college's Center for Jewish Studies also presented a program, "The Jewish Community of Ukraine and the Current Crisis," in which professor David E. Fishman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America analyzed the state of the Jewish community in Ukraine and its reactions to the unfolding events.

Another virtual event focused on Ukrainian scholars' insight on genocide and the Holocaust will take place on April 1 at The CUNY Graduate Center.

Mourning a Loss

CUNY is mourning the loss of Brent Renaud, an award-winning filmmaker and photojournalist who was a student in City College's MFA in creative writing program. Renaud was killed on March 13 while bravely reporting on the story of the refugee crisis.He was 50.

"As we mourn Brent's loss, let us both pay particular respect to his life and work, and take a moment to reflect more generally on the toll that aggression and violence of all kinds take on people around the world, every day," wrote City College President Vincent Boudreau in a note to the college community. "Our work on this campus is, over all things, to construct a community of understanding and respect, underpinned by a search for reasonable solutions to the problems that may divide people. Let us rededicate ourselves to this mission with renewed urgency, spurred forward by the loss of this particular life, the horror that has unfolded in Ukraine, and the too pervasive occasion for violence and human suffering around the world."

The City University of New York is the nation's largest urban public university, a transformative engine of social mobility that is a critical component of the lifeblood of New York City. Founded in 1847 as the nation's first free public institution of higher education, CUNY today has seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges and seven graduate or professional institutions spread across New York City's five boroughs, serving over 260,000 undergraduate and graduate students and awarding 55,000 degrees each year. CUNY's mix of quality and affordability propels almost six times as many low-income students into the middle class and beyond as all the Ivy League colleges combined. More than 80 percent of the University's graduates stay in New York, contributing to all aspects of the city's economic, civic and cultural life and diversifying the city's workforce in every sector. CUNY's graduates and faculty have received many prestigious honors, including 13 Nobel Prizes and 26 MacArthur "Genius" Grants. The University's historic mission continues to this day: provide a first-rate public education to all students, regardless of means or background.

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