Track & Field Student-Athletes Ngosong, Cascella and Juniel Present at Marquette's Soup With Substance

MILWAUKEE – Marquette University track and field student-athletes Brandon Ngosong, Sam Cascella and Justin Juniel shared their reflections from a summer civil rights pilgrimage at a Soup with Substance meeting last week on campus.

Soup with Substance is a noontime presentation on an issue related to social justice over a simple meal of soup and bread. Each academic year Marquette Campus Ministry hosts nearly thirty Soup with Substance programs.

The three student-athletes participated in a civil rights pilgrimage this past May around the South, led by the University's Center for Peacemaking. Along with a group of students and facilitators, they traveled to important sites including the Michael Brown memorial in Ferguson, Missouri, historic Mound Bayou, Mississippi, the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center in Glendora, Mississippi, and significant landmarks in Meridian, Mississippi as well as Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. They also toured museums in Memphis and Montgomery, Alabama before finishing the trip at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville.

The trip gave context to the Voting Rights Act of 1964, celebrating 60 years, as well as the difficult history around enslavement, mass incarceration, lynching, and inequality. Visits included first-person accounts from individuals involved in the movement, and those who are preserving these landmarks for the future.

Cascella, a biomechanics major, Juniel, a philosophy major, and Ngosong, a biomedical sciences major are all BIG EAST All-Academic Team and Athletics Directors' Honor Roll honorees.