Ashley Robinson knew early on she did not want to devote her everyday living fishing for lobster off the Maine coastline.
In its place, she preferred to get absent from the tough financial system and drug problems that plague Down East and took the daily life of her brother five yrs ago.
On Saturday Robinson, 33, joined 850 other Husson University graduates in accepting her diploma at the Cross Insurance Center. She did it donning a necklace with the hues of her late brother’s lobster lure buoys and a 2nd necklace with a miniature of a lobster measuring resource, engraved with his fishing license range.
Just ahead of signing up for the rest of the course of 2023 to march into the auditorium, Robinson reflected on that loss and what her own potential retains as she heads off to Boston to attend legislation school in the drop.
Five years in the past her brother Adam, 30, died from an overdose in their hometown of Sullivan. The tragedy would shape Robinson’s academic occupation.
“I actually want to review prison legislation and come to be a prosecutor,” she explained. “I would appreciate to come back again to Maine and do the job inside of the area community.”
She would like to fight not only the ongoing opioid epidemic in the condition but also for the rights of individuals afflicted by the challenging drugs funneling in in this article.
“I want to give back to all the individuals who under no circumstances obtained or get justice,” Robinson mentioned. “My brother died in this guy’s driveway and everybody who was there just ran off mainly because they did not want to be discovered there with his system.”
That spirit of offering back is a significant element of what bonded the class of 2023, a group of pupils who started out classes prior to the pandemic and are now graduating just as well being officers say its grip is loosening.
“All of you have been portion of an astounding journey,” Husson President Robert Clark advised the graduates in his opening remarks. “You have been challenged by the pandemic that transformed the planet and you came out the other aspect.”
The graduates ended up encouraged to continue the local community services they begun at Husson and to make on the successes they seasoned as undergraduates.
“When you initially came right here you have been uncertain and wandering the halls of structures on the lookout for lecture rooms,” Ryan Wheelock, university university student authorities president. “Since then you have evolved into leaders and job versions.”
Amid them, users of the course of 2023 have devoted close to 10,000 of volunteer provider in the community with companies like American Purple Cross, the Bangor Humane Modern society and nearby women’s shelters.
As she obtained completely ready to march into the auditorium and settle for her diploma, Robinson stated she can’t wait around to get started off producing a distinction. And she knows she will not be by itself.
“I know [Adam] is with me,” she stated. “There are so several other individuals I realized and grew up with that bought into prescription drugs and passed absent, I want to give back again for them.”
Robinson believes if the condition experienced properly-funded applications to aid people dealing with medication, her brother would have been there to observe her graduate. It breaks her heart that he experienced gotten thoroughly clean for a couple of yrs before at the time all over again using heroin and fentanyl.
“Our wellness treatment and mental wellbeing care has these confined methods,” she said. “We have to have to get additional resources devoted to aid people today like my brother in want.”
Before she heads off to Boston this slide, Robinson will continue on to do the job whole time this summer months as an in-house own caregiver and possibly join her father on his lobster boat.
