#Student
Takeo
ver
What happened when our ministry moved off-campus.
Bible Studies reported 100% attendance. Over a dozen people prayed Morning Prayer with Fr. Luke. Discipleship meetings took place daily.
This is what happened when students staged a #StudentTakeover of undCatholic.
With classes moved online and dormitories closed for the rest of the semester. It looked as though the life and ministry of the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center was about to slide to a standstill.
While Father Luke and the staff prepared to start streaming Masses online, members of the student board proposed a #StudentTakeover to keep the community of the Newman Center together through the COVID-19 lockdown.
At the center of their takeover was a social media platform called Instagram.
Instagram is a website that began as a way for people to share pictures with each other. See a really beautiful sunset and want to show your friends? Instagram. Make a delicious dinner and want to brag about how good it looks? Instagram. Unlike Facebook, Instagram is made to work best on a cell phone, not a computer. So it has become the default website for college students.
Abby Skibicki appears on-screen during her “Instagram Takeover” having coffee with her favorite mug. Abby’s video has been viewed over 200 times.
We at undCatholic started using Instagram a few years ago. And the most useful feature for us (by far) has been the “InstaStories” -- short videos taken throughout the day that are linked together and viewed in quick succession. Father Luke has used this to update our donors about the day-to-day happenings at the FOCUS conference, or about his Bike Race training. This time, though, it was students who ran the show.
The undCatholic Student Board proposed the Instagram Takeover to Fr. Luke early on during the lockdown.
The first student to stage an Instagram Takeover was Jacob Tupa. His first video showed him eating breakfast and praying the daily readings from the Magnificat. “I’ve been big on the intercessory prayer lately. Been talking to Luke (on of the FOCUS missionaries) about that,” Jacob says directly to the camera.
Abby Skibicki also staged an Instagram Takeover. “The way I start out my weekday mornings,” Abby whispers into the camera, “is by saying hello to some of my favorite friends: the women in my discipleship chain.” She turns the camera around and there, on her laptop screen, are half a dozen other women from the Newman Center, faces in a grid on the screen. “We all log into a Zoom call at about 7:30 in the morning and spend a holy half hour together, so that we can give our day to God, and to just keep each other accountable, and to grow in fellowship.”
To emphasize the last point: These are half a dozen college aged women voluntarily going our of their way to begin each day communal prayer.
Emily Sears ended her Instagram Takeover with a video of the sunset over Harlow, ND. “God is showing off tonight.”
“I’m impressed to see the spirit of community still alive and well,” said Fr. Luke as he recalled the InstraStories. Taylor Sagan began her Instagram Takeover (and her day) by praying the rosary. Emily and Maria Sears began their day with coffee and reading Scripture. Jacquelyn Blessum began with the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
Throughout all the of Instastories, students were filming themselves going to Bible studies and discipleship, streaming daily Mass and praying by themselves.
“The mission has always been to ignite the fire of faith on campus. But it is now evident how brightly it was buring as things have moved off-campus,” said Fr. Luke. “Seeing the faith and community of the students grow during this time has been the great surprise blessing of this semester.”
Emily Sears baked her grandmother a loaf of pumpkin bread during her Instagram Takeover.