Tim Wagner
Student Life Editor
Active minds set out to recognize eating disorders during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.
Throughout Keene State’s campus there have been sticky notes with positive messages in the campus’ bathrooms. Senior and President of Keene State’s division of Active Minds Amelia Schill said the sticky notes are a tradition she was introduced to when she assumed her title of president. According to Schill, “The sticky notes are for body positivity, the awareness of it and just a reminder that everybody is amazing no matter what.”
Schill also said, “It is an Active Minds tradition… and I am pretty sure we have done it every year since I have been at Keene.” According to Schill, this style of support follows Active Minds’ schedule of honoring each mental health day or week of the year.
Schill said, “We do try to make a conscious effort to do that, due to COVID, we have had some difficulties with that.” Though COVID seems to be a consistent roadblock, the organization has pushed forward with the events they can. Schill said the sticky notes initiative was a blast to organize partly due to the race to get the sticky notes up.
Schill said while creating messages on sticky notes she would occasionally burst out singing. For instance, when she was writing “nobody’s perfect” she broke out into the Hannah Montana theme song “The Best of Both Worlds.” When asked, Schill said her favorite sticky note was “don’t let them dull your sparkle” due to the upbeat nature of the message.
Active Minds Treasurer and Keene State student Gabrielle Carr said the sticky notes are a nice, affordable way to spread positivity. Carr said when students reach college, there are a lot of different ways to cope with life. However, she clarified that there are negative and positive ways to deal with life and the message behind the sticky notes is to let the campus know they are wonderful the way they are and to keep pushing on. Carr, similar to Schill, said her favorite message was “don’t dull your sparkle”, also because of the message behind the note.
Schill said the set up of the initiative was interesting. Schill said running out of sticky notes was a hiccup she did not expect. According to Schill, “We would have a large pile of sticky notes and they would be gone in a single building… three sticky notes per mirror and math… but that’s a lot of sticky notes.” Schill also said the group ran into another small issue while posting the sticky notes. According to Schill, the four Active Minds members on campus are all women and when it came time to enter the men’s bathroom, they would knock, but according to Schill “not everytime we would get a response so we would open the door and someone would be in there and be like ‘what are you doing?’ Okay we are going to wait for you to leave.”
If anyone is interested in joining Active Minds, Schill said the best way to join is to email her at amelia.schill@ksc.keene.edu.
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