A student who runs a company advocating against gun violence has received offers from 25 universities, including Ivy League schools.
RuQuan Brown, 17 – a high school football captain from Washington, DC, who has led his team to multiple championships – has received offers from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and others to play football.
Many of the offers came as coach recommendations and ‘likely’ letters – which has the effect of a formal letter of admission as the Ivy League doesn’t offer scholarships – to play the game on a full scholarship.
The college offers came after Brown launched Love1 earlier this year, a merchandise business advocating against guns and raising awareness to end such violence.
The 17-year-old decided to do so as a result of tragedy; he lost his stepfather last year to gun violence, and a football teammate in 2017 to the same thing. So he decided to do something positive about it.
He said, as per CNN:
No matter how many guns we remove from the streets, people are still at risk of death.
Brown said his stepfather, Arnelius Howell, taught him about ‘football, being a man, respect, family and so many other things’. He added: ‘My dad was my role model, my hero, my big brother, every role that you could imagine a dad should play, he was that.’
Howell was fatally shot on October 26, 2018, in a killing which the teenager said changed his life. ‘When this happened, I knew that I had to start something to end gun violence,’ Brown said.
A year before the death of his stepfather, Brown’s closest football teammate, Robert Lee Arthur Jr., 18, died from a fatal gunshot wound in September 2017. After losing both loved ones in such a tragic way, Brown launched Love1 on January 30, 2019, his stepfather’s birthday.
He named part of his company after Arthur’s jersey number, 1, with his company donating 20% of proceeds to One Gun Gone, an anti-gun violence art project in Rhode Island. From proceeds raised, One Gun Gone offers a gun buyback programme and makes art from them.
Scott Lapham, the project’s director, said he values Brown’s ‘desire to transform the absolute pain of losing loved ones to gun violence into a positive gesture’ by donating a percentage of Love1’s profits to the art project, despite the distance between the two initiatives.
What an inspirational guy and an amazing vision. Congratulations, RuQuan!
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).