picture by: Joselyn King
Jessica Yahn, left, a former U.S. Army Cultural Help Staff member in Afghanistan; and Sgt. Main George Fraser, retired Special Forces Inexperienced Beret; take part in a panel dialogue as a part of the Structure Day Celebration at Wheeling College on Wednesday.
WHEELING – Wheeling College on Wednesday celebrated “Structure Day” – together with the freedoms the Structure protects, the alternatives these freedoms carry, and what it means to battle for these freedoms.
A panel dialogue befell within the Troy Auditorium, and it included some girls who had been members of the U.S. Army’s Cultural Help Staff – a gaggle who assisted U.S. Special Forces on the battlefields in Afghanistan by speaking to Afghan females.
Additionally included within the group had been two Ukrainian immigrants now working at Wheeling College who spoke of the lack of liberties of their homeland.
The precise “Structure Day” every year is Sept. 17. Former U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, efficiently sponsored laws in 2004 requiring public colleges and authorities workplaces to offer instructional applications on that date to advertise a greater understanding of the U.S. Structure.
The panel dialogue at Wheeling College was led by Jessica Yahn, a U.S. Army veteran and Wheeling native who served on the Cultural Help Staff alongside U.S. Special Forces in Kunduz and Mazar-I-Sharif, Afghanistan. Yahn can also be the daughter of Bob Yahn, an engineering professor at Wheeling College.
She instructed the Wheeling College college students that in America “we elevate our palms to not a king,” however to the thought of freedom.
“And those self same values impress folks everywhere in the world to face up and battle,” Yahn stated.
She dropped at the panel her commander with the joint activity drive, Sgt. Maj. George Fraser. Fraser stated on the time he and Yahn had been in Afghanistan, feminine American troopers weren’t permitted to battle on the battlefield.
However it turned evident having girls on the battlefield throughout missions would nonetheless be worthwhile, because the Afghan tradition considers it insulting for male troopers to strategy Afghan females who don’t know them, he continued.
The Cultural Help Staff members accompanying Special Forces had been in a position to communicate with Afghan girls within the discipline and sometimes acquire necessary info wanted for battle, he stated.
Fraser requested how many individuals within the viewers had truly learn the U.S. Structure. Few current raised their palms, and he inspired them to take action.
“That’s what I’ve sworn to uphold,” Fraser stated. “I don’t care who you’re. I don’t get to say what you do along with your freedom… it’s all the identical to me. I battle for the structure. That’s it.
“That’s the distinction between this nation and others. We’re not preventing for a monarch, or a president or an individual. We battle for freedoms.”
Catherine Harris, additionally a former Cultural Staff Chief within the U.S. Army, stated she had been a drug supplier who wished to alter her methods and go on to varsity, and she or he joined the army to perform this.
“I noticed there was extra to me than simply pores and skin colour or gender,” she defined. “The oath I took affirmed that there are issues larger than me.”
Harris stated she jumped on the probability to hitch the Cultural Help Staff within the battlefield as a result of she knew these troopers round her had been keen to die for her.
“And I used to be keen to die for them,” she added.
Mahnaz Akbari, born in Iran, stated she had no freedom or entry to training within the nation, and she or he first immigrated to Afghanistan so she may be a part of the army there.
“It’s onerous to reside in a rustic when you don’t have any identification,” she stated. “I discovered my identification within the army.”
She went on to hitch the Afghan Special Forces as a tactical platoon commander in a program that was parallel to the American Cultural Help Staff
Pashtana Durrani, who was born in Pakistan, is now the primary lady to steer certainly one of Afghanistan’s most distinguished tribes, the Barakzai Tribe. She manages over 10,000 households.
Durrani instructed the scholars she sees equal entry to training as being a key to training. She has since based Study Afghanistan, and has arrange colleges for younger females there.
After the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan final yr, Pashtana relocated to Boston and is a analysis scholar at Wellesley School.
Silvia Mydresku is a Ukrainian immigrant who got here to America 17 years in the past as a world scholar at Wheeling College. She achieved a nursing diploma there and a doctorate in nursing from West Virginia College, and now teaches nursing at Wheeling College.
Mydresku stated on the age of 25 she knew she needed to come to America, “an ideal nation with freedoms which I may solely dream about.”
“Get your training, obtain your freedom and be who you could be,” she instructed the scholars.
She additionally interpreted for fellow Ukrainian Konstantin Nikitchenko, an inside painter and designer on the workers at Wheeling College. He stated “it isn’t sufficient to simply be alive, however that it’s a must to keep alive.”
