Students show appreciation for safety workers

Interaction with USC’s safety workers is part of daily life for students: From scanning into University dorms to showing ID cards to “yellow jacket” security ambassadors after curfew, these individuals are an integral part of the USC experience.

USC’s Explore Kindness club hosted Safety Worker Appreciation Day on Thursday night to encourage students to take a moment and have a conversation with security workers they see on a daily basis. Students could also provide them with snacks or thank-you cards as tokens of appreciation.

“[What] I’m hoping for is that all the safety workers here, especially the ones that are here late at night for us, that they just feel like they are appreciated by our community, because they are the protection for our community,” said Explore Kindness co-president Evelina Godecki, a junior majoring in business administration. “I just want them to have a smile on their face and feel like what [they’re] doing is impactful.”

While the event was based on encouraging individual actions from students to demonstrate their appreciation, Explore Kindness met on Trousdale Parkway at around 9 p.m. to provide supplies students can pass out.

The club provided snacks and candy, as well as supplies to create thank-you cards.

Nancy Huang, a sophomore majoring in business administration, participated in the event by making and giving thank you cards to the security officers she often sees around campus.

“These workers keep us safe every day — it’s the least we can do to thank them,” Huang said. “You can walk around on campus and feel totally fine, that’s because of the workers.”

Beyond having safety workers feel appreciated on Thursday, Godecki hopes the event makes students more aware of safety workers to increase personal interaction throughout the year.

“I hope that this will end up sparking the interest in doing it a little bit more,” Godecki said. “I remember last semester, there was a yellow jacket right outside of my building that I would always say ‘Hi’ to. I would always pass and she would ask how my day was, and I would ask her the same.”

Godecki said she never exchanged names with the safety worker, but they always recognized each other when they passed. She hopes the event will encourage students to build a connection with the workers and become more familiar with them.

The Explore Kindness club is a USC chapter of a nonprofit organization of the same name, dedicated to making the world a better place through random acts of kindness, according to its website.

The USC chapter does campaigns throughout the year to brighten people’s days, such as provide coffee for students during move-in day and “Do Something Nice” day, where they hand out written tasks for students to complete on Trousdale Parkway, with each task being a gesture of kindness for the student to do that day.

This also isn’t the first time Explore Kindness has shown gratitude for safety workers — during Spring 2017, it held a Yellow Jacket Appreciation Day, but event participation was low due to stormy weather, Godecki said.

“It wasn’t the impact it could’ve been just because of weather reasons,” Godecki said. “So we decided that we wanted to do it again this year, and make it more inclusive, because there are a lot of people keeping us safe at night, so we wanted to include DPS officers, and the people who stay up late to let us into the buildings.”

This event, and Explore Kindness in general, has a simple goal for students at USC.

“We want people to have a little bit more intention with their day,” Godecki said.