A 1999 newspaper clipping did more than preserve an election result. It preserved the beginning of a pattern that has followed me throughout my life.
While studying at the Faculty of History of Lesya Ukrainka Volyn State University, I became involved in the student union for a very simple reason: no one else wanted to do it.
Most students did not understand why the organization existed, what it was supposed to do, or why several percent of our scholarships were withheld as union dues.
I began alone. First, I tried to answer those questions for myself. Then I began answering them for my friends — Natasha, Serhii, Misha, Roma and Vitia.
By the time we handed the work over to the next team after graduating in 2000, students knew what their union was and why they needed it. The organization had acquired respect, meaning and real strength. We became such a force that no one could even look at a student the wrong way without the student union knowing about it.
That did not happen because I was somehow exceptionally strong or remarkable. My team believed in my ideas. We worked together, and gradually thousands of students stood behind us. That is what turned an organization that had existed only formally into a real movement.
Five from the History Faculty
In 1999, during the nationwide Student Republic project, I was elected ‘student mayor of Volyn.’ Five of us came from the History Faculty. Our faculty union bureau took part as a team independent of the university administration. A few days later, it was our five-person team that won.
The newspaper recorded the result: among five candidates, the victory went to Vasyl Davydenko of Lutsk, a history student and chair of the faculty union committee. The strength was not in administrative resources or individual names, but in unity.
Afterward, people tried to draw me into political struggle. But I did not choose politics. I chose what I truly loved: working in radio.
I believed then that something could be achieved and that justice could be found. I still believe it now.
