This year’s Student Council (SC) spearheaded the Gratitude Initiative, an effort to enhance community compassion and respect.
“It’s to increase the amount of gratitude on campus,” explained Amy Hwang, the Field Dorm Prefect. “During Early Week when the campus had empty and it was just the [Senior] Council and the football team, we had a lot of meetings, almost every single day, talking about our goals as a whole group and what values we want to encompass. This year, I feel like everyone wanted gratitude.”
During the first All-School Meeting of the year, the Senior Council asked students to look out for gratitude jars and boxes around campus and to write about things they are grateful for at Kent.
Jaime Avanceña, one of the Vergers, explained the future plans of all-school meetings, “Every All-School Meeting, we’re going to try and just take a few cards out, read them out loud to the whole school, and give a little shout out to what people are thankful for in the community.”
But the initiative does not stop there. “We’re trying to do that through chapel involvements of people singing more hymns and being more engaged in their spiritual life at Kent,” Amy said, “And also respecting the teachers, [such as] practicing saying thank you at the end of each class.”
The SC intends to promote gratitude in dorms as well. “In Field, we have the Kindness Post Box. So we try to help students normalize expressing gratitude more often. The Senior Council is trying to put it into the habit of saying thank you a lot more often,” Amy shared.
“Right now, we [also] have the Gratitude Jar in the library and the Gratitude Board in Hoerle,” Jaime noted. “Our goal is to expand it to, firstly, the other dorms, and then hopefully in more public spaces like the dining hall and the SC.”
As for how things are going, both SC members have observed a positive trend around Kent.
“We’re pretty happy [with] how things are shaping up so far. Within the first week or a couple of weeks of school, we were able to have a decent amount of gratitude cards,” said Jaime.
Amy agreed with Jaime, saying, “I think the level of gratitude has gone up, honestly. For Field especially, and even in the dance ensemble, I feel like people are being respectful to the faculty, being more aware of the beautiful campus we have and appreciating it a lot.”
Lastly, Amy shared some challenges about the initiative. “The thing about gratitude is you don’t know how successful it is; it’s not quantified. You don’t really have a base to measure with, but just [with] the frequency of people saying ‘thank you’ and hearing what people love about Kent.I think [we’re doing] pretty good!”
