Kindness Day at WWU – A little bit of sunshine in a dark world
Kindness Day at Western Washington University
A little bit of sunshine in a dark world
Written by Melinda Assink
Executive Assistant to the Provost and Executive Vice President at Western Washington University
I am not going to lie or sugar coat things. Last academic year was tough; Crappy, really hard, exhausting. I know not every university or college had to deal with the things that we did (die-ins, sit-ins, protests, demonstrations, encampments), and I know a lot of folks went through even harder situations, but the global consensus among administrative professionals in higher education seems to be that they are exhausted from an increasingly active student, staff, and faculty population over the last few years. The world is hard, and it gets more difficult all the time; with global pandemics, divisive elections, gun violence, wars, genocide, the list goes on and on. It is easy to feel deflated and hopeless, and unfortunately, looking ahead to a future of continuing conflict, many of us might feel stress and despair. I hope to share today about an event we have been doing the past several years that adds a little bit of sunshine back into our world in the fall, International Kindness Day.
Officially, Western’s 2019 celebration of Kindness Day was a product of a summer working retreat for the Senior Management Administrative Resource Team (SMART). SMART membership includes the Assistants to the President, Vice Presidents, and Assistant Secretary to the Board. In an effort to provide a positive experience for our campus community during what can often be a stressful time of year, the committee set up four different Kindness Booths around campus in the morning to distribute buttons with kindness messages, collect kindness sticky notes, and also served hot cider and hot cocoa. In the afternoon, there was also a Kindness Fair in the Viking Union Multipurpose Room with many activities including therapy dogs (fan favorite), rock painting, a Kindness Wall with all of the sticky note messages, and students from Professor Christie Scollon’s Psych 377 Positive Psychology class presenting information and activities about the science of kindness.
Barbara Sandoval
Former NAPAHE Board Chair and Senior Executive to the President at Western Washington University
Behind the scenes, several years ago, a familiar face, former NAPAHE Board Chair and Senior Executive to the President at Western Washington University, Barbara Sandoval, had an idea. She realized that we needed to do something to bring some sort of positivity to campus. Tensions had been rising on campus for several months after some racially motivated threats against our Associated Students President, a sit-in in the President’s Office, and additional frustration among members of our community. Barbara brought her thoughts to our SMART retreat and collectively we realized that what we needed was more kindness in the world. In doing a little research, we ran across International Kindness Day, falling every year on November 13. This date really resonated with the SMART Team as it is also the time in the Pacific Northwest that the weather starts to get wetter, darker, and more depressing, and for us on the quarter system, about the time we start to have midterms and stressed students. Barb instigated an activity that has been super powerful and continues every year since. “Kindness Day allowed us the opportunity to bring positivity to our community and get people to think outside of their own struggles and about what they could do to make a difference. We want to get across that it is the smallest things, like smiling at someone; to just be kind instead of being so navel gazing and looking around to see what else is out there. We wanted to ebb the flow of negativity, and after brainstorming as a team, we put together a proposal for the President. He liked the idea and pledged $1,000 for us to start with and build other partnerships with faculty, students, and other offices on campus. We worked well as a team. As we moved onto the next year, I wanted to give someone else the opportunity to lead, and share that experience.”
During the COVID pandemic, our event pivoted online with conversations on kindness from a variety of university leadership, staff, faculty, students, and community members. In the years since, we have included some more events in the spring around our ‘study week’ before finals, and continue to evolve our Kindness days to reach more members of our community. Current committee chair, and Executive Assistant to the President, Rayne Rambo is dedicated to continuing this legacy of kindness, outreach, and joy.
I feel strongly that kindness is a universal language, and I love getting to tap into it and remind people, kindness is free!! I witness the joy and impact of kindness each time we host a kindness event. As humans we are hard wired to be kind, show kindness, and promote kindness. Everyone always leaves with a smile, and you can't help but feel a little lighter, and loved.”
This year, in anticipation of a stressful few weeks of elections, we decided to pivot our WWU Kindness Day to November 1 in order to inject more kindness, healthy well-being, and positivity before election night. The ‘Kindness Krew’ has grown in size including folks from many other divisions on campus, and we attract a wide variety of participants in the activities of the day, including the spouse of our University President and mental health professional, Uzma Ahmand Randhawa. As Uzma said in her reflections on the 2021 Kindness Day, “It is an important time to remind ourselves about the positive impact of spreading kindness on campus and in our communities and to recognize why it matters now more than ever. Kindness towards oneself and others has a tremendous healing power. It brings harmony and happiness in social groups and reduces isolation. Scientific studies on kindness also tell us that it has the power of bringing change to our emotional and physiological levels. Kindness releases Oxytocin which promotes cooperation and closeness and makes us happier by literally activating the brain’s reward circuitry, while strengthening our social connections. It is also worth mentioning here that kindness is contagious and can create ongoing waves of its benefits.”
Remember, a Kindness Day can start small and build into a big change.
If your institution would benefit from a Kindness Day event, please feel free to reach out to
