Michelle Klemens was crouched low on the floor with her hands resting on her knees; her eyes were focused on the group of students she had recruited to do push-ups.
As she counted their reps, her voice boomed in short, sharp bursts in what those around her called her marine voice.

On Nov. 13, the Student Veterans Center hosted a Protect the 22 Push-up Challenge as part of Veterans Appreciation Week at the University of Oregon. Klemens and her co-organizers encouraged participants to do 22 push-ups to give visibility to the 22 veterans that die each day by suicide.

At the event, people with all abilities were encouraged to participate in whatever capacity they were able to. Some did planks and others squatted, but the encouragement was the same for everyone. Klemens did the challenge a number of times alongside the people she recruited.

“That’s the mentality in the military. You have your brothers and your sisters and you stick together — you don’t leave anyone behind,” Klemens said.

As the Veterans Program specialist at the Student Veterans Center and a veteran herself, Klemens wanted to make sure this wasn’t an event focused solely on the tragedies.
“[Student veterans are] a really resilient population that has a lot of strengths, so we really want to highlight that as well,” Klemens said.

Klemens signed up for the military at 17 years old without telling anyone. Her family found out when the recruiter knocked on their door — because of her age, she needed their signature to enlist.

She was young, but determined.

For Klemens, the military was an “opportunity to make something of myself” and the experience she gained during her service changed her life trajectory.

Initially, Klemens thought she would be a “lifer” — a person who is committed to a lifetime career in the military — but during her third year in college, as she was coming to terms with her queerness, she was separated from the service because of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.

She sees her job working with student veterans as a homecoming of sorts. She’s coming back to the community she loves and, with her masters in social work, is providing the support and resources she needed when she was transitioning from serving to college life.

The push-up challenge is important to Klemens, who previously worked as a mental health therapist, because it furthers the discussion of mental health in the veteran community.

There is a preconceived notion of who and what veterans are, which often ignores their intersectionality, Klemens said. And having the community come together to create partnerships bridges the gap and helps people “identify that humanness in each and every one of us.”