Joe Brown
Editor in Chief
Shhh…secrets are being shared.
Secrets – whether amusing, serious, optimistic or any other range of emotion – are being spread on the campus of Springfield College. The thing is, no one seems to be keeping quiet about it. In fact, that is the entire purpose of SAVE’s Post Secret event.
Along the wall of the Richard B. Flynn Campus Union, two large white boards are overflowing with decorative notecards sharing people’s secrets. No names can be found, leading to a judgment-free space where anyone can open up. Welcome to Post Secret. The name of the event says it all.
The Post Secret event, hosted by Students Against Violence Everywhere, was inspired by Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret. According to Warren’s PostSecret website, the initiative is “an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard.” In addition to his website, Warren has published five books to date, each one filled with a collection of secrets that people submitted.
At Springfield College, Nicole Madera, Brianna Collins and the rest of SAVE’s board felt no need to deviate from Warren’s mission. They simply localized the event to show that everyone has secrets that they need to get off their chests.
“We’re showing that they’re not just online and they’re not just in books, this is what people are actually thinking on campus,” Madera said.
For Madera, the president of SAVE, the event was the start of trying to increase their club’s role on campus. The SAVE club has always focused on preventing violence and raising awareness about it, but wanted to increase their impact.
“We’re trying to change this club and make it more of an inspirational, encouraging type of club,” Madera said. “We want to encourage people to feel better about themselves.”
Sharing secrets is just one way to allow people to free themselves of anything that might be weighing them down. At the same time, it allows for open expression in a number of ways – humor, sadness, anger and more.
“You’re freeing yourself on these index cards and making it like an art project where you’re taking all that you feel and expressing [that],” Madera said.
The event has garnered widespread participation, with 200-plus secrets already shared and counting. The only notes that SAVE will not post on their boards are ones that are overly negative, offensive or inappropriate.
As for the rest of the secrets, they create a collage of important information that people felt the need to share.
“We are accepting of every single thing that’s on this board and we take every single one that’s up here seriously,” Collins, the club’s vice president, said.
At the end of the event, SAVE will be sending all of the secrets that they collect to Warren with the hopes that some of them may be used on his site or in a future book.
The Post Secret event lasts until Friday, March 7, and is free for anyone who wishes to participate.