With the second of December marking the last Feel Good Friday of the semester, ASNIC board member Katie Peck sat down to talk about what she feels helps make Feel Good Fridays an important part of the NIC Campus and ASNIC.
Peck took over the project after being elected to the board earlier this year.
How many Feel Good Fridays has ASNIC helped this year?
“We’ve had at least ten events this semester alone.”
Does Feel Good Friday ever have themes?
“The last Feel Good Friday we had a special bullying theme and we really had a lot of students involved; we even had 44 students write hurtful words all over their face. We had over 300 people attend.”
Since this is the last Friday event of the semester, did it have a specific theme?
“Today, being the last Feel Good Friday of the semester, we really just wanted to focus on student input, any suggestions they have, what they’d like to see, what kind of food, themes — I really want it to be something students enjoy. Today we didn’t really have a theme other than that; it was pretty much just focused on feeling good on Friday, relaxing before your finals and [finding] ideas for next semester.”
Was this Feel Good Friday connected in any way to De-Stress Fest, then?
“I would love to support De-Stress-Fest; it’s provided by ASNIC student events, but today was mostly just focused on meeting students so they know who their student representatives are and just talking to students. I think that’s the biggest problem we have sometimes, otherwise we just assume what students want. This is the best way we have of talking to students, getting their input, their suggestions, and implementing them.”
How many suggestions have you gotten so far?
“I’d say around a hundred, and a few that were e-mailed to me.”
What are some of the things you enjoy about participating in Feel Good Friday?
“I think it’s a very positive way for ASNIC to connect with students. It’s so hard sometimes to connect with people you don’t know and it just makes it a very casual way to interact, have a snack, [say] ‘I hope you feel great today,’ ask how school is going. If we have a theme like anti-bullying we can really bring, and have an impact on our students, and let them know what kind of student services we have and what we can do for them.”
Do you get a lot of student questions about what’s going on with ASNIC?
“Not just with ASNIC, but the school in general. They bring different questions to us all the time. What are we doing to represent them? What are we doing about these problems? And they tell us what they like about the school.”
Out of all the things students come to you about, what do you hear the most?
“We hear things about parking, the tobacco policy, that’s pretty common. But I think the thing we do the most is just talking to them. I think a lot of students feel lonely, and having someone say ‘Hey, how are you doing? I hope you feel great today,’ really helps. The questions the students bring to us the most is, ‘What are we doing for the students?’ They say, ‘We voted you in, we elected you, what exactly are you doing? What’s your job?’ I think often students don’t really know what we are doing so it’s just a chance to say, ‘This is what I’m working on, what do you think?”
Do you think that Feel Good Friday can encourage people around here to reach out more to other students?
“Absolutely, I think it’s a way for students to just talk. If we have a hot topic, something we know is a problem or is an issue on campus, it starts and generates a lot of conversation among students. When we all wrote on our faces for anti-bullying, it was a huge conversation starter. Certain words that may not hurt me were really hurtful to someone else and it started conversations about gossiping, about our interpersonal relationships and how to support each other—it was really impressive to me to see students who don’t know each other giving each other hugs.”
What would you say has been the most successful Feel Good Friday so far?
“The Anti-Bullying Day. Which was shocking, it really was because I would figure a topic like that wouldn’t have many people wanting to participate. We had a lot of participation in that… Actually, I take that back—pizza days are definitely the most popular. Everyone comes to Pizza Day, everyone loves it. It’s like a giant pizza party.”
What is your aim with Feel Good Friday?
“My aim and my objective is to make Feel Good Friday student oriented, it needs to be a way for students to know what their representatives are doing for them. How are we supposed to be the voice of the students if we don’t talk to them? We can’t say ‘this is what the students want,’ if we don’t. So it’s a casual way to get student input, to just to get to know our constituency.”
Is this something all the ASNIC members are behind?
“Absolutely, I could not do Feel Good Fridays without the entire ASNIC board. I constantly have different senators coming each week, supporting, talking to students, actively engaging. It’s just really refreshing, and nice to see the interaction.”
