What's your secret?

By: Amanda Watkins and Jamie Hillman

Whether it’s excessive stress and anxiety from school, a crush on your best friend, or personal insecurities, everyone has a secret.

In response to this reality, the Student Wellness Centre has developed the “MacSecret” program. Based on the online phenomenon “PostSecret,” the initiative is going into its third year.

The program is designed around the sharing of personal secrets via hand-written postcards revealing anonymous concerns or insecurities. As outlined on the MacSecret posters, the goal of the program is to “raise awareness about the many challenges students face, and to provide an outlet to share these concerns openly, yet anonymously.”

“Having the anonymity is helpful when dealing with things that are more challenging to address,” explained Pearl Mendonca, a Wellness Education Coordinator at the Student Wellness Centre.

By offering MacSecret as an outlet of expression, students are able to open up about issues and ideas that they may not otherwise be comfortable sharing. In an effort to create a safe and comfortable environment, the Student Wellness Centre strives to offer services that cater to a variety of concerns, such as stress and life issues, mental health, relationships, academic concerns and identity struggles.

In discussing the values of the MacSecret project, Khadeeja Sheikh, a Mental Health Team Leader, expressed the rewards of the program. “The fact that students can share [these secrets], helps relieve stress…We were surprised at how sincere the secrets were and [how the program] allowed them to write something really private.”

MacSecret has 10 locations around campus that provide blank postcards for students to fill out and boxes where they can be submitted. Currently, boxes are situated in Mills, Innis and Thode libraries, DBAC, SHEC, the north and west quad Residence Service Desks, the Student Success Centre, Student Accessibility Services and the SWC.

The coordinators find it interesting that “Depending on where the boxes are, the secrets are often geared towards those locations and who uses them,” said Melissa Fernandes, Wellness Education Assistant. For instance, the boxes in libraries often housed academic concerns, whereas boxes in residences usually held secrets about relationship struggles and identity crises.

The program was first run in the 2010-11 school year by the SWC. Despite the fact that the boxes and postcards were available for the entire school year, the program only received around 150 postcards.

This year, the coordinators are looking to change that and have more students submit messages about their concerns, fears and personal thoughts, as it is an effective way of expressing pent up emotions and stress-inducing secrets.

The boxes have been available since Nov. 1 and will be up and running until the end of the month. Already in this month alone, the SWC has gathered around 60 postcards and are hoping to increase that amount exponentially as the month nears its end.

Once the cards have been gathered, the coordinators will be posting scanned secrets online via the SWC’s Facebook page, and will be putting them up on their bulletin boards.

Similar to the initiative of PostSecret creator, Frank Warren, the Student Wellness Centre hopes that by displaying the secrets, students will be able to relate and connect to one or more of the secrets and help them understand that they are not alone in their struggle.

The organization also hopes to use the web, much like Warren, to make the postcards and ideas more accessible. The initial PostSecret website, www.postsecret.com, was developed in 2005 as “an ongoing community art project,” according to its webpage. But within two years, the site received over 2,500 postcards and became far bigger than initially anticipated. The site grew into a web-based community that allowed anonymous strangers to post secrets from all around the world without feeling judgment or alienation.

Initially, a comment section was enabled to allow viewers to connect to one another, but it was eventually removed as it defaced the original judgment-free mandate.

And even though many secrets are hard-hitting and stress-inducing, some deal with more trivial matters. As stated at his March 2012 presentation at Western University, Frank Warren revealed that the most common secret he receives is admitting to peeing in the shower.

The representatives from the SWC explained that many of the secrets they receive are usually related to mental health and academic concerns, but the project welcomes postcard messages of all natures.

So drop off your secret, and help yourself while helping others.