ALUMNI ALUMNI PROFILE
SHAWN FRASER (U’07) and NICHOLE HUCK (U’05)
By Sabrina Cataldo (U’97, ’99)
Shawn Fraser and Nichole Huck fell in love at Luther College at the University of Regina. They were good friends the first year and have fond memories of making tea and popcorn in the kitchenette in the residence basement and studying for
that was shaped by people I met at residence.” A bonus was that when she was on the larger U of R campus, she never felt alone. “You could walk down the halls at the university, and you were always seeing people you knew, because you knew hundreds of people.” Fraser notes that while Regina folks are very friendly, it can be difficult to break into established social circles when you first arrive. “At Luther, people are hungry to make a new social circle. There’s
“I think about how formative the first few years of university were and how much of that was shaped by people I met at residence.” Logic 100 together. “It was like a little home. Now, it feels like foreshadowing,” Huck says. Both Fraser and Huck are from small towns and lived in Luther residence. Fraser’s older brother and sister had also gone to Luther and he was always excited to visit them. “It was an interesting place with a fun atmosphere. It was an obvious choice for me to go there,” he says. Huck is a big fan of living in residence. “I think about how formative the first few years of university were and how much of
28
LUTHER STORY SPRING 2022
an advantage when you come from away, because a week into school, you know all new people,” he says. Fraser made lifelong friends at Luther and regularly runs into people from his time there. Residence also taught Fraser and Huck to get along with people from different backgrounds, interests, and political stripes. Huck started a culture club that met in the cafeteria on Sunday evenings to talk about current affairs. “It’s easy to be friends with people you agree with already. But at Luther, you’re put together
with different people, and you’re forced to learn to get along and appreciate others,” she says. Another fond memory is eating lunch in the Luther Cafeteria. “Shawn and I love meeting new people. We would say, ‘Who are we going to sit with today?’ It was fun for us at every meal to sit down with a bunch of other people—it could be a 40-yearold student from Iran or a group of international students from China. We learned about different people at every meal,” Huck says. While Huck registered through Campion College, she attended as many classes as she could at Luther, appreciating the small class sizes and the opportunity to get to know professors and students better. “You’re not just a nameless person in a class of hundreds,” she notes. The couple got to know the Luther chaplain, Cheryl Toth, quite well, and she was the officiant for their wedding in 2009. They continue to keep in close contact today. Fraser and Huck explored their commitment to social activism in their degrees. Fraser served as Vice-President of Student Affairs with the University of Regina Students’ Union and convocated with a political science degree in 2007, after spending a year in Indonesia with Canada World Youth. Throughout her bachelor of arts in journalism degree, Huck explored the Karen conflict in Myanmar (then Burma), the world’s longest ongoing civil war. Upon convocating in 2005, Huck received a travelling scholarship to Thailand and reported on the conflict from there. Once Fraser
