Students share their secrets

Don’t worry, your secret is safe. It’s just posted for everyone on campus to see.

The PostSecret phenomenon has touched down at Boston University, via Active Minds at BU, a chapter of an organization that works to increase students’ awareness of mental health issues.

Active Minds looks to provide information and resources regarding mental health and mental illness, encourage students to seek help as soon as it is needed and serve as liaison between students and the mental health community, according to its profile on YouDo at BU.

Active Minds at BU has worked to make its own version of PostSecret, an ongoing, community mail art project, created by Frank Warren. The project involves people mailing in their secretsanonymously on a homemade postcard.

Select secrets are posted on the PostSecret website, or featured in art galleries in the U.S. and internationally.

This year, Active Minds at BU launched the “BU Secret’ program based on Warren’s project.

Starting today, students will be able to write their secrets on postcards placed in their mailboxes or found at tables set up by the club at the Warren Towers, West Campus and Myles Standish dining halls at dinner time, or the George Sherman Union Link during the day.

Active Minds member and College of Arts and Sciences freshman Rachel Tesler said 20,000 postcards will be distributed in all. Once students decorate them, they can place them in drop boxes at the dining halls or the GSU.

“The goal is to let people express themselves,” she said.
College of Communication freshman and Active Minds member Rachel Kessler said the group focuses on mental health awareness and, by mimicking the PostSecret project, it “lets people speak up.”

Kessler said 20 to 30 students are helping organize the effort, and bulletin boards around campus will display the postcards as they are gradually completed by students, with Warren Towers hosting the largest temporary display.

Active Minds Co-Presidents Becky Gordon and Laura Marcucci each became involved with the national organization in the fall. After attending the national conference in October, both CAS seniors wanted to do more to volunteer at BU.

“Frank Warren’s project was a big inspiration at the conference and [they] talked a lot about how college campuses were going to do more to bring students together,” said Gordon.

Marcucci and Gordon returned home from the conference and began working to revamp the Active Minds club at BU, making it more “fun to be a part of.”

The deadline for all postcard submissions is March 31, when Active Minds will construct a single, large bulletin board of all the postcards, possibly at Mugar Memorial Library.

Gordon said she hopes the BU Secret project will provide an outlet for students to express their opinions, hopes and fears.

“The main purpose is to stimulate conversation about issues no one really talks about but need to talk about,” Gordon said. “PostSecret and Active Minds are really about bringing the community together and having an awesome time doing so.”