The future is still unwritten for our Student Advocacy Fellows
2025 Wrap Up
By Michyah Thomas, REPRO Rising VA Student Fellowship Coordinator
As 2025 rounds out, I have continuously returned to the song Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfield. Not just because millennial-core has taken over the internet, but because it captures exactly what it has meant to watch each of our Student Advocacy Fellows grow this year. For our students, this year has held a wide variety of wins, losses, and lessons. As these student leaders have tightly held the reins and powered through storms, this fellowship has been an invitation for students to write something new: new ways of leading, seeing, learning, teaching, new ways of showing up for the communities they know and love. They have each met that invitation with courage, creativity, and commitment.
This year, 5 student leaders completed our program in last spring and 14 new students walked in with a blank page. They didn’t know the challenges they would face, how many times they would have to reach out to land the perfect partnerships, the stories they would invite their peers to tell, or the resilience they would acquire along the way. They couldn’t have predicted the events that brought in more students than they had pizza for, the successful coalitions they’d form, or the powerful relationships they would build with one another. But they showed up anyway, ready to try and ready to see what they were made of. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding and the story our students wrote together was beautiful.
These Student Advocacy Fellows organized with intention, hosting 24 events across 10 weeks this fall, and 31 events in 2025 overall. In these efforts, spring capstone projects included various petitions, educational activities and the development of EC education workshops. They built community through partnerships with more than 10 unique campus organizations across 7 campuses, often collaborating with these partners multiple times a semester.
When event plans fell through or administrators ghosted them, they pushed harder. They centered justice even when standing in their values required them to be bolder than they have ever been in their support of reproductive freedom. They tried things they hadn’t had the confidence to do before and intimidating things while steadying themselves through societal moments that felt really uncertain. They trusted their instincts. They used their voices to “rise up” for the things that matter. And in doing so they have been a light; using purpose-driven action to illuminate issues on campus that need addressing.
The most powerful thing about a song like Unwritten is that it is a clear reminder that the story isn’t finished.
For these young people, their story is actually just getting started. With most of our students under the age of 21, it’s inspiring to consider what the rest of the story they write together might be, considering chapter one included Spring 2025 campaigns that led to increases in access to emergency contraceptives and STI testing.
As our 2024-2025 fellows have moved on to new ventures, our 2025–2026 fellows have been emboldened by the work and support of previous cohorts as they seek creative ways to combat stigma around sexual and reproductive healthcare.
The beautiful thing about the story being written right now is that the pen is in their hands. As the fall semester closes and students head into a restful winter break, I hope they feel proud of what they have accomplished. When our student leaders return in the spring, I hope they are reminded of the invitation they accepted in August and continue this book, knowing not only that the rest is still unwritten, but one day, they’ll look back on this chapter with pride, knowing they were already becoming the leaders they hoped to be.
