By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Five years ago, Yannick Kluch’s efforts to research Bowling Green came up with next to nothing.
“I looked up Bowling Green, Ohio, on the internet and I didn’t find that much,” said Kluch who was leaving Hamburg, Germany, to make BGSU his home for the next five years. “But the moment I stepped onto campus, I felt like I was home.”
Since then, Kluch’s efforts have put BGSU on the map – earning a NCAA award for diversity and inclusion in athletics with the We Are 1 Team program.
On Friday, Kluch was presented with the Drum Major for Peace Award by the Bowling Green Human Relations Commission. The name of the award is taken from a speech given by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
Though from Germany, Kluch understand the gravity of the award.
“The first thing I did was jump in my apartment for 15 minutes,” said Kluch, who is now a third year doctoral student in popular culture.
“This means so much to me,” he said as he accepted the award from Dr. Emily Monago and Rev. Mary Jane Saunders, co-chairs of the commission.
Kluch is founding president of the WA1T program which promotes social justice through sports on the campus and in the community. The program operates with the belief that sports can unite diverse people.
“We use passion and sports to make a change,” he said.
This is coming from a guy who arrived at BGSU knowing nothing about one of its biggest sports – football. Shortly after arriving on campus, he was invited to a football game. He packed his soccer cleats, but soon found them not necessary. Kluch found himself at his first American football game, cheering when the crowd cheered, and making friends over a sport he knew nothing about.
“I really believe at Bowling Green and Bowling Green State University, we really are one team,” he said. “I really think it’s the people.”
Brown family and BGSU Madrigals perform at tribute
For the upcoming NCAA award presentation, Kluch said he was asked to pinpoint his favorite moment working on WA1T. Though difficult, he said it was likely when a former student athlete, who is transgender, spoke about his experiences.
“He said ‘I didn’t know that my story mattered,’” Kluch recalled, noting his plans to expand WA1T to a national level. “That’s when I knew this is what I had to do.”
Efforts like Kluch’s are especially needed now, Saunders said.
“Our nation is a divided place,” she said, noting the violence, racism and xenophobia across the nation. “It would be so easy to see this as someone else’s problem. It would be so easy to give up.”
But Saunders looked back to King’s words, back to another troubled time in our nation’s history.
“We do not despair of the future,” she said. Instead, “we see a bridge to the dawning of a new day.”
Kluch agreed the drive behind movements like WA1T is what is now needed. “I think it’s that passion we need for the next four years,” he said.
“Yes, there is work to be done,” Saunders said. But there are people like Kluch willing to take it on. “We are anticipating the things he will do in the years to come.”
Rev. Gary Saunders talks about Not In Our Town
Rev. Gary Saunders, the community co-chair for the Not In Our Town organization in Bowling Green, took an opportunity at the King tribute Friday to explain the NIOT movement to work toward a safe and inclusive community.
“We celebrate diversity,” Gary Saunders said. “Those are not problems. They are gifts.”
He also asked community members to get involved. The next NIOT meeting is Feb. 9, from 3 to 5 p.m., in the Wood County District Public Library.
“I think I can hear Dr. King urging us on,” he said.
