When the package arrived at the University Honors Program office, Kate Braser was surprised — in a good way. Inside the box were postcards, news clippings, a poster and a letter. It was from Aurora University, a four-year private liberal arts college in Aurora.

“It was really cool because we had no idea they were doing this,” Honors Program coordinator Braser said. “It was really cool.”

What Aurora University did was its own version of Huskie Acts of Kindness, a program where people wrote their random acts of kindness on postcards as a tribute to the victims of the Feb. 14 shootings. Students and staff at Aurora University chose to follow that model, which was created by the Honors Program, renaming it Spartan Acts of Kindness. It was their way of honoring the five victims.

A few weeks ago, the Huskie Acts of Kindness postcards stopped trickling in. So Honors Program members decided to take down the cards that were posted on the front windows of the program’s office. Two days later, the Spartan Acts of Kindness package arrived. Those postcards are now displayed in the office’s windows.

The Honors Program received thousands of postcards and displayed them in the Holmes Student Center on Feb. 14. Schools from DeKalb and Sycamore to Yorkville and Monroe County also participated in the program.

Honors Program members and employees printed so many postcards, they lost count.
“Hey Nancy, how many did we print?” Braser asked Nancy Castle, interim director of the Honors Program, last week in the program’s office.

“We got to 1,000, and then we went to 2,000, and then we went to 4,000, and then we went to 8,000,” Castle said.

Braser was especially touched by one passage in the Aurora University letter, which was written by Brandy Raffel, assistant director of student activities at the university.

“‘This small token represents our continued efforts to establish the idea that we will always celebrate the power of kindness and be defined by those wonderful ideals rather than the actions of just one person,” Braser read from Raffel’s letter. “‘This commitment to showing sensitivity and caring for others will continue in many ways on our campus in the years to come, and we thank NIU for being such a wonderful role model even in a time of great tragedy.’”

Braser set the letter down. “I loved that because that’s exactly what I hoped we’d get across,” she said. “The last two sentences were awesome to read. That’s exactly what I hoped people would get out of it.”

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