Wednesday, April 13, 2016 // The Statement
14B
Family, faith and friends are what LSA
senior Brittney Williams credits to her success
today. The presence of all three has empow-
ered her to overcome her own struggles with
depression, an ill mother and the academic
challenges she faced during her time as an
undergraduate student.
Williams, who began her undergraduate
odyssey in 2005, acknowledges her path to
graduation later this month has been atypical
— but don’t try and convince her that she is not
representative of the leaders and best.
“For many students here, the typical expe-
rience is that you succeeded, you didn’t face
that many obstacles, and it can make students
who have had significant challenges feel badly
or like they don’t fit in,” Williams said. “But to
me, what I have gone through, and what other
people who have faced hardships have gone
through, is the quintessence of what a victor
stands for. To be a victor and to be a Wolver-
ine means that you have had to fight to get to
where you are today.”
Williams had to fight harder than most.
When she enrolled in the University of Michi-
gan in 2005, she planned on pursuing a degree
in Political Science. Her first four years at the
University, however, were less defined by her
academic ambitions and campus involvement
than by her battle with depression. Williams’
depression became so severe in November
2009 that she attempted suicide and was hos-
pitalized for five days.
Following the hospitilization, Williams was
faced with the decision of whether to take time
off from school to focus on her mental health.
“ I was advised by my advisers, my family
and my friends to take a semester off to figure
some things out,” Williams said. “I just kept on
saying, ‘I’m OK’ and so I kept pushing through.
I would continue to struggle academically,
personally, mentally. But some of that was the
culture that exists here at Michigan that com-
pels you to burn yourself out before you take
any sort of break.”
Williams continued her studies at the Uni-
versity until 2011, when stress caused her aca-
demic performance to deteriorate until her
academic suspension at the end of the winter
semester in 2011.
When she returned home, Williams faced
her next challenge — caring for her mother,
who had been diagnosed with early-onset
Alzheimer’s disease in April 2008.
She became the primary caregiver for her
mother, whose health was quickly worsening.
“When my mother was diagnosed, I was a
junior,” Williams said “My siblings were, at the
time, 17, 11, 10 and 9 years old. So it was really
rough on everyone in my family, but it was
the most heartbreaking for the youngest, who
would later struggle to remember her before
her disease.”
Her mother passed away on Oct. 11, 2013,
a day after her sister’s birthday. Williams
assumed responsibility for all of her mother’s
funeral arrangements, which took place the
day after her 25th birthday.
The following May, Williams returned to
Michigan and re-enrolled at the University.
When she returned, she said she found the
place that she left in 2011 had changed in many
ways: some positive, some negative.
Upon her return, she joined the Central
Student Government and founded her own
organization, Michigan Organization of Non-
Traditional Students (MONTS), to give voice
to other nontraditional students.
“When I came back I had a hard time
because I was so much older than everyone,
and I did a focus group where the Center for
the Education of Women was doing a study on
nontraditional students,” Williams said. “And
the focus group had such a great conversation,
and it led me to want to start a student organi-
zation to bring people like this together.
In her typical “victor” fashion, she embraced
and overcame these challenges. Later this
month, Brittney Williams will be graduating
with her bachelor’s degree in sociology. She
hopes to attend the University’s graduate pro-
gram in Social Work and pursue a career in
Alzheimer’s advocacy, using her skills in ger-
ontology to help families — especially children
— of Alzheimer’s patients receive counseling.
“My goal, down the road is to be lucky
enough to not have a job,” Williams said. “That
would mean that we have accomplished our
goal, and Alzheimer’s will be a thing of the
past.”
Intercultural understanding has always
been a topic of high importance on campus
— as evidenced most recently by conten-
tion over anti-Islam drawings in the Diag.
Hafsa Ghias, an LSA freshman, wants to
change that.
“The idea behind this project is to use
art and creative expression as a way to
reach out to people and evoke emotion,”
Ghias said of her creation, The Peace Ini-
tiative.
The Peace Initiative is a project whose
purpose is to promote understanding
between cultures through artwork, specif-
ically in regard to dialogue between Mus-
lims and some of the larger groups within
the nation, a cause which is very personal
for Ghias.
“My parents are Pakistani, but I was
born and raised here, so I always see
myself as a blend of both Pakistani and
American … that’s played a huge role in my
life,” Ghias said.
Her experience of growing up as a Mus-
lim in Michigan has played an important
role in her motivation to start The Peace
Initiative, but she also is driven by her pas-
sion for art.
“I’ve always been an artist, that’s been
a huge part of my life,” Ghias said. “And
growing up wearing the hijab, I did get a
lot of negative comments … so the way that
I expressed myself is by creating art.”
The origins of the project started in
Ghias’s senior year of high school. Prompt-
ed by what she saw as a greater number of
Islamophobic events happening around
the world, dehumanizing coverage in the
media, a feeling of frustration and the
desire to do something, she started work-
ing on an art portfolio for herself.
“(The portfolio was meant) to creative-
ly show that Muslims were just normal
people,” Ghias said. “We have all the same
dreams, passions — we want to be success-
ful, we want to have a family — all that.”
Ghias’s personal art portfolio expanded
this semester into a larger scale project
after an encounter with the co-founder of
optiMize, a social entrepreneurship club at
the University.
“(optiMize) holds a social innovation
challenge every year,” Ghias said. “And
basically what you can do is you can apply
to this challenge with an idea to change
the world, and they give you the tools to
expand on your project.”
Ghias’s organization was able to receive
financial support from optiMize, and she
and her four co-founders will be giving a
presentation about The Peace Initiative at
optiMize’s showcase on April 13. Though
the project is not yet complete, Ghias
intends for there to eventually be a show-
case of all the artwork created for it.
In addition to working with optiMize,
Ghias intends for The Peace Initiative to
collaborate with other social justice orga-
nizations around campus.
“We’ve reached out to groups like Lean
In, the Muslim Students’ Association and
Hip Hop Congress,” she said. “And we
want to reach out more to ethnic and reli-
gious groups as well, specific groups that
work with social justice issues, and work
with them to use art as a medium to release
information.”
Ultimately, Ghias wants to use art as a
means to open up discussion in that same
way, to promote peace and to help create
a world that is more open, just and under-
standing.
“I want to use art as a way to be that
pushing point where people are comfort-
able to ask questions in a positive way, to
reach out to other people,” Ghias said. “If
we can use art to make people feel empa-
thy, or make people feel anything honestly,
it will help to overcome the issues we have
today.”
BRITTNEY WILLIAMS
HAFSA GHIAS
B Y T I M
C O H N ,
D A I LY S TA F F
R E P O R T E R
B Y D AY T O N H A R E ,
D A I LY A R T S W R I T E R
GRANT HARDY / Daily
ZOEY HOLMSTROM / Daily