Ukrainian Society at the University of Pennsylvania resumes activity

by Markian Dobczansky

PHILADELPHIA - After a small break, Ukrainian student life at the University of Pennsylvania has returned - and just in time, too. A little over a year after the Ukrainian Society at Penn was founded by Penn students Laryssa Hud and Markian Dobczansky and Temple student Ulana Luciw in September 2003, the group found a great way to make its presence felt on campus: by raising awareness of the struggle for democracy in Ukraine led by Viktor Yushchenko.

Shortly after returning from Thanksgiving break, the group tied orange ribbons to lampposts on Locust Walk - a popular campus thoroughfare - and distributed them to passers-by along with information about the situation in Ukraine. Members of the club - some of whom traveled to New York in order to vote in the election - also participated in protests in Philadelphia and Washington in the days immediately after the fraudulent run-off election of November 21, 2004.

On December 9, 2004, the group organized a roundtable discussion titled "Electing a President: Causes and Consequences of the Orange Revolution." Panelists included Henry Teune, professor of political science at Penn; Oleksa Bilaniuk, professor emeritus of physics at Swarthmore University and current president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.A.; Leonid Rudnytzky, professor emeritus of Slavic and Germanic literatures at LaSalle, former rector of the Ukrainian Free University in Munich and current visiting professor of Ukrainian at Penn; and Oleksandr Simonenko, senior researcher at the Institute of Archaeology at the Ukrainian Academy of Science and current Fulbright scholar at Penn's art history department. The club president, Mr. Dobczansky, provided an introduction and moderated the panel.

The Ukrainian Society at Penn organizes a wide variety of activities and events, including speakers on various topics, language tables and movie screenings, and furthers international political awareness. One of the first events organized by the club in the fall of 2003 was a "food and culture night," during which varenyky, borshch, kapusta and kovbasa, as well as potato pancakes were served.

Proceeds from this event went to the Lviv-based Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization; the money was used to organize a St. Nicholas program for children from the orphanage in the nearby town of Skole. Laryssa Hud, the club's treasurer at the time, coordinated the transfer of funds with fellow Plast member Petro Steciuk, who was then in Ukraine on a Fulbright grant.

The club has also had an impact on the academic life at Penn. One of its most important achievements has been getting Ukrainian courses offered jointly through the Penn Language Center and the Slavic department. Penn welcomed back Prof. Rudnytzky - who had done his graduate studies at Penn - last fall to teach all levels of the Ukrainian language. This fall Prof. Rudnytzky will be teaching beginning and intermediate Ukrainian, and will also offer a course on the intellectual history of Ukraine.

In September 2004 the Ukrainian society welcomed its first speaker to Penn, Victor Malarek, a Ukrainian Canadian journalist whose recent book "The Natashas: The New Global Sex Trade" is a major journalistic exposé of the growing problem of human trafficking in Eastern Europe. Mr. Malarek spoke at the Penn Bookstore and his impassioned speech elicited an appreciative response from an audience of about 50 people.

The local newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, reported on the activities of the Ukrainian Society four times this academic year, including stories on Mr. Malarek, the Orange Revolution roundtable, awareness-raising activities such as the orange ribbons, as well as a story on the Penn Language Center, in which it was mentioned that a group of "eager" students had helped to bring back Ukrainian language studies at Penn.

The Ukrainian Society is always willing to welcome new members. In addition to its formal functions, the group also gets together to watch Klitschko boxing matches and attended the Maria Burmaka concert at the Ukrainian League of Philadelphia on April 2. As the crowning event of a highly successful semester, the club will hold an end-of-the-year party on April 22.

For more information, readers may contact Mr. Dobczansky at (267) 230-6335 or markian.dobczansky@gmail.com.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, April 17, 2005, No. 16, Vol. LXXIII

| Home Page |