Nov. 27 marked the start of Florida Southern’s second annual Kindness Week. During Kindness Week, the Fanin Center collaborates with the Student Government Association to host various events to spread smiles and love leading into the holiday season. This year, Kindness Week began with Candy To-Go on Monday morning.
Students line up for Candy To-Go in front of the Fanin Center
However, in a week packed with t-shirt giveaways, toy drives, and handwritten notes, Associate Chaplain Wyatt Robinson said it was not simply about the events and numbers.
“I think that the success of Kindness Week is in those [simple] interactions…it was good that we had some big events and those are always fun but that’s not the only marker of success for us…It was cool to see the way people were embracing the opportunity to show kindness on campus.”
Sophomore student, Meghan Smith, attended the Fanin Center’s t-shirt giveaway and shared her takeaway from what was an impactful week, “I thought it was really interesting…I think it’s a great idea because I truly think that we need to spread more positivity. I think they should continue it in the future.”
Although Kindness Week’s impact cannot simply be measured by statistics, the numbers clearly show how widely the Fannin Center’s message spread. According to the Office of the Chaplain, 700 candy bars were passed out at their giveaway on Monday. 500 t-shirts were passed out to students on Tuesday and 30 kind notes were written by students for distribution at the chapel on Wednesday.
This year the t-shirts displayed a complete redesign compared to the smiley face design featured last year. Robinson shared that quite a few variables were taken into account when envisioning this year’s design.
“It was definitely Taylor Swift inspired…I saw someone wearing a Taylor Swift shirt and [thought] what if we put Mocsie on there and that was it,” said Robinson. “Then we had a graphic designer Ally Seay…she came and sat down with us and was able to take our idea and make it really awesome…last year we just had a smiley face on the shirt and [this] year we wanted to do something totally different.”
Excited students grab their commemorative Kindness Week t-shirts on Nov. 28
In the years to come, students can look forward to a fun new design for each kindness week as the Fanin Center continues to build on what already has presented itself as a solid foundation. That foundation made its debut last year as a new initiative on campus. The idea for the now eagerly anticipated annual Kindness Week came out of the Chaplain’s Office in the summer of 2022 – the first year of full student involvement after the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of that, they looked to make a splash and kindness seemed like a perfect way to do that.
“Kindness week was an idea that we had here as a staff in the chaplain’s office last summer,” Robinson explained. “We were thinking of this as an opportunity to establish new traditions…[We wanted] to promote those values that were important to us from our faith but also important to our campus…What started as a conversation and some googling slowly snowballed into this week of events last year [and we said] we definitely want to do that again.”
Students spread positivity by writing kind messages with chalk in front of Jenkins Fieldhouse
Florida Southern’s Week of Kindness seems to be quickly becoming a mainstay for fall semester events. The Fanin Center will continue to stay active in the spring as they will host Beyond worship services on Thursday evenings at 7:30 p.m.