“The future holds hope, the unknown holds possibility.”
“I’m grateful for everything that college has given me and shown me.”
“You got this!! Don’t give up! It will all get better.”
“Change your thoughts + change your world.”
“I am grateful to be a Tommie.”
Students left these messages and others on a “hope wall” Tuesday at the Aquinas Scholars lounge in the Murray-Herrick Campus Center.
Being the first of its kind, the hope wall was an idea that junior and Aquinas Scholars service chair Katie Iverson had long awaited. She said she envisioned a space on campus for students to share their experiences.
“I was just trying to figure out a way that we could do something really good for our community on campus,” Iverson said.
The hope wall was simple in its preparation: an expansive blue canvas made out of construction paper and laid on a table with a box of markers and pens beside it. The messages, each a personalized note that included names, quotes or things to be thankful for, were written on blue and yellow Post-it notes.
The wall gave students freedom to materialize what they hold close to them.
Iverson came up with the idea via Pinterest, where she found photos of other college campuses setting up their own hope walls in student center hallways.
“I was doing research on campus involvement and thought the hope wall would work really well with our student body,” Iverson said.
Iverson said the hope wall comes at a time when community engagement on campus has been somewhat uncertain.
“As this was our first time doing it, I was really scared that people were gonna walk in here, there’s going to be only three sticky notes on there,” Iverson said.
These worries were quickly squashed by the time the event rolled around; at the end of the hour, the wall had nearly 60 responses.
Iverson said she was pleasantly surprised by student turnout and was hopeful about the event’s potential outreach in the future.
“I started reading it, seeing people have put names of friends and family members, appreciation for the warm weather and just genuine words of encouragement,” Iverson said.
With midterms approaching, Iverson hopes that the wall will be a great event option to soothe students’ minds about upcoming exams.
“I could see this being like, ‘Oh, I’m not in this alone’ type of mantra, and I ‘hope’ — pun intended — that this is seen as a community-building and interconnective type of experience,” Iverson said.
Since the event was hosted in the Aquinas Scholars lounge, Iverson said she recognized that many students unfamiliar with the location might have found it hard to contribute. She said she is considering setting up the hope wall in more recognizable areas on campus.
“This honors event was the start, but it’d be really cool to set similar events like this on campus, places for people to easily add their thoughts to,” Iverson said.
Other methods of spreading the word have already been discussed between Iverson and Aquinas faculty director Hugh Smeltekop, including social media sharing, email newsletters and digital signage displays.
Ultimately, Iverson and Smeltekop agreed that the most appealing idea is getting the hope wall up and mobile and into a variety of locations on campus.
“The O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library and the Anderson Student Center both have high student foot traffic, and those places were amenable to having the wall displayed. We are glad to partner with both places,” Smeltekop said.
For the Aquinas Scholars Program, Smeltekop and Iverson said they hope to continue creating new and unique ways for communities to engage with each other and the world.
“In times of social change like the current moment, people often start to feel like we are moving further from that vision. At St. Thomas, I see that hope is made more real through mutual respect and dialogue. Together we can build a collective vision based on our commitment to the common good,” Smeltekop said.
Jake Slack can be reached at slac8833@stthomas.edu.
