“Unissued Diplomas” held its last day of exhibition on the second floor of McIntyre Library. This showcase listed the stories of 40 Ukrainian students who will never graduate after being killed in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The display is part of a national exhibit first installed on the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion. According to the event’s website, throughout 2023, the exhibit illuminated 36 students who lost their lives before graduation.

The current exhibition consists of 40 individual sheets, each giving the name, age and photo of a Ukrainian student who lost their life. The display also has a brief description of each person in both Ukrainian and English and lists when, where and how the student died.

The display has been translated into seven languages. It has been hosted 110 times throughout 24 countries in 2023 alone. The exhibition has even been hosted by 67 universities across the globe.

Iryna Levada, a political science and geography student studying internationally from Ukraine, organized the event and brought the exhibition to UW-Eau Claire. Levada said she first heard of the display this spring and wanted to share it with students on this campus.

“Even if [students] were just passing through, they can still look and get a moment of reflection and think, ‘Hey, those students were also thinking of exams, but they also had to care about their families, about whether to leave their city or not,’” Levada said.

Levada worked with Heather Fielding, an English professor and director of the honors program, to organize the exhibition. Levada received the images from a friend who posted the exhibition at another university. The display will be posted through Nov. 18-26 and commemorates 1,000 days since the invasion began.

The display is posted along the outside of the Honors Commons of the second floor of the library. Anna LeBouton, a third-year history education student, stopped by the exhibition and said it was hard to process.

“I think it is important to remember that these are people, not statistics,” LeBouton said.

The Unissued Diplomas Initiative aims to raise money for The Unissued Diplomas Endowment Fund. This fund is collecting money to create a scholarship in honor of the students in the exhibition. 

The scholarship will pay the tuition for one student per year. The fund will also provide money for scholarships and grants for students who apply to create a project.

The Memorial Platform gathered all the information about the students for the exhibition. This organization specializes in gathering and publishing information on civilian and military casualties.

The Unissued Diplomas organization has a Google form that universities or organizations can use to bring the exhibition to their area and continue spreading the word.

“I also hope that students who face issues in their communities see value in bringing awareness of other struggles in the world,” Levada said. “They have the voice to do that and the university will support them in doing so.”

Fisher can be reached at [email protected].